Caption Contest: Difference between revisions

You're flipping through a magazine, and there are almost always captions under the pictures (save for ads), but some magazine editors admit they can't do the best at them. So they offer the readers a chance to do better, usually challenging them to "Beat this caption." So if you can write a better caption than the magazine writers, it'll appear in the next issue, and maybe even win the contest. Any further prizes are optional.

 

 

A [[Sub-Trope]] of [[Audience Participation]].

 

{{examples}}

 

* ''[[Have I Got News for You]]'' has this round (almost) [[Once an Episode]] with odd-looking photos [[It Makes Sense in Context|taken from news stories]].

** A 2003 episode ground to a halt just before the end as the guests, Ruby Wax and Glenda Jackson, appeared [[Completely Missing the Point|not to understand the concept]], with both of them asking what the "real" answer was and Jackson complaining that Wax's team had been given a photo and hers hadn't (prompting [[Guest Host]] Martin Clunes to shout, [[Crowning Moment of Funny|"Well, if you'll WIND YOUR NECK IN we'll get your picture out!"]]).

* On ''[[The Office]]''(US version) Pam puts up a funny drawing she made of a Sabre printer for a caption contest in the office. The other employees make suggestions which insult Sabre products, much to the chagrin of Gabe, the Sabre company's representative and he bans the contest.

 

*** [[Memetic Mutation|GENTLEMEN]]

* ''The New Yorker'' runs a weekly caption contest.

* Satirical magazine ''Punch'' ran a famous and long-running competition to find new captions for old cartoons featured in its pages a century earlier...

* ''Nickelodeon'' magazine had a caption contest at the end of each issue ("Say What?").

** Back in the days when there was a personal computer manufacturer named "Wang", readers went to great lengths to [[Running Gag|fit it in]] to their captions.

** All-time winner was for Pietro da Cortona's [http://todaysnewsart.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/cortona_rape_of_the_sabine_women_01.jpg "Rape Of The Sabine Women"]: {{spoiler|'''Woman at upper right''': "Hey, Louise! I'm looking right at his Wang and it's this big!"}}

 

== Newspapers ==

* [http://eggycaption.livejournal.com/ Eggycaption's Journal] offers up a pic for captioning (nearly) every weekday.

* ''[http://www.cracked.com Cracked]'' holds a daily Craption contest: whoever comes up with the stupidest caption makes it to the home page.

* The webcomic ''[[Bruno the Bandit]]'' has them sometimes, for the single strips. (Most often, cartoonist Ian McDonald will deliver them later by himself.)

* ''[http://www.icanhascheezburger.com/ I can has cheezburger?]'' chooses its daily [[LOLcats]] with a caption contest: the visitors write the caption in the Lolcat Builder, and the best caption is featured in the home page.

* ''[[Star Wars]]'' fan site [http://www.theforce.net/humor/ TheForce.net] had a caption contest in its humor section, but it hasn't been updated for a while.

** "Weekly", of course, meaning "whenever Eric gets around to updating it".

* In the "online forum/blog" variant, [[Fark]] will periodically offer farkers a chance to caption an odd picture, usually one featuring erstwhile dignified and newsworthy persons. (We're looking at you, Mr. President.)

* The Adventure Game Studio forums used to host regular "Caption Contests", where one user mashed a couple of completely unrelated pictures together and then challenged other users to make a (vaguely) coherent comic out of this.

* [[Mezzacotta]]'s infrequently-updated strip ''Awkward Fumbles'' is basically a Caption Contest webcomic. Comics are drawn with word balloons but no dialog, which other readers submit.

* "Caption This!" mentioned above lasted until the reruns stopped airing in the mid-2000s, it inspired numerous other websites started by loyal participants knowns as "Cappers". One such notable site is [http://www.hipsoda.com/caption/ Hipsoda's Caption Crack]