Mass Effect is amazing.

Wins and Fails

I've been noticing an increasing tendency lately to describe things as "epic fail". Now I love gloating about someone else's epic fail as much as anybody else, but things have been going a bit too far. Not every fail is an epic one, people. In any case, I've decided to clarify the details of wins and fails for everybody, because it's clear that many people are taking an ad-hoc approach that is significantly hurting the efficacy of communication in this community.

First and most obvious, there are three basic categories that things can fall into: wins, fails, and neutral. Neutral basically means there is no particular category, and really we're not interested in neutral things at all. I just mentioned them for the sake of completeness. What constitutes a win or a fail should be blatantly obvious to anyone with a brain. Just to recap, though, a win is something which is generally very awesome or a total success. It is also an expression of approval. For example:
Nov 29 00:07:09 lol, got my statics test back today
Nov 29 00:07:21 thought I did horribly bad on it, but I got an A-... the class average was a D
Nov 29 00:08:06 ra, win :D
A fail, of course, is just the opposite:
Nov 16 18:24:38 * Thevenin made an epic fail just now.
Nov 16 18:25:11 So I came back from class like 7 hours ago, and decided I'd go to bed. So I lock my door and fall asleep on my bed.
Nov 16 18:25:36 Well I wake up just now, and I'm like "where is my keys", and it turns out I left them in the keyslot of my door, outside my room.

That's still all fairly obvious. The subtlety is that wins and fails come in levels, and most people don't seem to be too clear on those levels. While it's difficult to define a level in any precise way, it is possible to list the major levels and rank them. So here you go. These are all of the major ones, listed from most fail to most win:

• Epic Fail
• Greater/Major Fail
• Fail
• Lesser/Minor Fail
• Neutral
• Lesser/Minor Win
• Win
• Greater/Major Win
• Epic Win

Not all of these levels get used that much, and generally speaking there's favoritism towards fails rather than wins. It's worth pointing out that fail and win are specific levels, but can also be used as generic terms without assigning a specific level at all. You can also add your own levels anywhere in the ranking; these are only the official, major ones. The only limitation is that epic cannot, under any circumstance, be superceded. You can't create a fail more serious than an epic fail.

So how do you actually select a level? Well, the truth is that you kind of have to feel it in your gut. Experience will lead you to better understand what level any given win or fail is at. In general though, it's simply important to be aware of whether or not the one in question is epic or not, because that's the important one. My guideline is that if you're not sure whether it's epic, then don't call it epic. Epic fails and epic wins shouldn't be cheapened by common use, because then they lose their punch when it really counts.

<Shadowdancer> epic meh
<MaulingMonkey> I find your ideas intriguing and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
<KnightTemplar> orly?
<Promit> MaulingMonkey, stfu