New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest: NEW RULES!

Has anyone ever submitted a caption for the weekly cartoon contest?  I've been looking at these for decades, and draw an absolute blank when it comes to something witty to say.  Here's this week's:

http://contest.newyorker.com/CaptionContest.aspx

And then I look at the finalists and wonder "why didn't I think of that"?  

What caption would you put on this cartoon?  I swear on a stack of bibles that I won't use anything any of you submit.

Without even looking:

"I'd like to add you to my professional network at Linkedin."

link

"What a misunderstanding!"

drummerboy said:

Without even looking:

"I'd like to add you to my professional network at Linkedin."

"These urban hookup events are getting weirder and weirder..."

"This is the LAST time we rent horses from PETA!"

ml1 said:

"This is the LAST time we rent horses from PETA!"

That's a good one!

marylago said:

ml1 said:

"This is the LAST time we rent horses from PETA!"

That's a good one!

I agree!  Why don't you enter and we'll vote for you!

I might as well. Nothing to lose

We ain't gittin' away and you ain't gainin' on us.  Let's call it a draw and next time we'll steal real horses.

I submitted once with what I honestly felt was a fairly funny caption.  Unfortunately, the three finalists that week were all hilarious and vastly superior to mine.  I’m a longtime reader of New Yorker, and I know not every week produces three brilliant responses.  But that was the luck of the draw the one time I participated.   

I’ll submit again if and when I’m inspired, but so far I’ve just been a spectator.

I don't think the public gets to vote.  I believe the winner is chosen by the New Yorker cartoon editor, or at least he has final say with input from the staff.  I have not always agreed that the eventual winner should have been.

" This is not what I had in mind, when I said we had a rockin' posse!"

calliope said:

" This is not what I had in mind, when I said we had a rockin' posse!"

chopin said:

I don't think the public gets to vote.  I believe the winner is chosen by the New Yorker cartoon editor, or at least he has final say with input from the staff.  I have not always agreed that the eventual winner should have been.

Yes, the public votes.  I do it every week.  Look at the link I posted above.

ml1 said:

calliope said:

" This is not what I had in mind, when I said we had a rockin' posse!"

  

+1

Here's mine:

"Giddy up, boys. We have a convention to broker!"

Hahaha said:

Here's mine:

"Giddy up, boys. We have a convention to broker!"

Appropriately Hahaha!!    

My husband and I enter often, just for fun. That week, mine was:

"This is getting to be a dangerous hobby."

Not my best, but it's not like my best ever wins anyway.

So, here are the new rules of the caption contest:

http://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/bob-mankoff/help-we-need-you-to-choose-the-funniest-cartoon-caption-contest-entries?intcid=mod-latest

Cartoons have been part of The New Yorker since the very beginning, in 1925. For most of the magazine’s history, you, the readers, participated just by enjoying their wit, whimsy, and social commentary.
But, back in 1998, in a special Cartoon Issue, we introduced the New YorkerCartoon Caption Contest. The contest was an annual event until 2005, when it became the feature you now see on the back page of the magazine every week. For ten years, you have not only been enjoying the cartoons but helping create them. And you also vote on the three finalists we select from the five thousand or so entries that arrive every week.

Soon we expect that number to increase greatly. Why? Because we are working to loosen the rules about who can enter the caption contest. Right now, not everyone can. For reasons too complicated to go into here, the awarding of a prize—a framed and signed print of the cartoon, with the winning caption—creates legal issues that make it difficult to have citizens from certain countries enter. Also, the prize prevents anyone under eighteen from entering. Even if those issues weren’t issues, shipping that print to Kathmandu just costs too much money.
For those reasons, we are going to eliminate the encumbering prize so that pretty much everyone, everywhere, can enter, which will be great for everyone, everywhere, except for my assistant, Colin, who has the job of culling the thousands of captions down to a manageable fifty or so that I then winnow further and show to New Yorker editors for yet further winnowing.
If the entries increase, as we expect, it will be impossible for Colin to do what he’s been doing unless we clone him. In this episode of The Cartoon Lounge, I explain to Colin why that won’t be necessary, by enlisting your help.

P.S. Here’s the voting page. And here’s more about our fancy crowdsourcing algorithm.

Here's the new contest.  As usual, I am at a loss for words:

http://contest.newyorker.com/CaptionContest.aspx

"What did you expect for $500 a month?"

mumstheword said:

P.S. Here’s the voting page. And here’s more about our fancy crowdsourcing algorithm.

Ugh. They reduced something pretty cool to the equivalent of getting the most likes on a comment.

paradi said:

mumstheword said:

P.S. Here’s the voting page. And here’s more about our fancy crowdsourcing algorithm.

Ugh. They reduced something pretty cool to the equivalent of getting the most likes on a comment.

I agree.  I think I voted for 15 entries and only really liked 2 of them.  Most of them were unfunny to me.  Frankly, I think the ones people posted here were far superior to what I was given to vote for.

I was told once by someone who worked at the New Yorker, that when they received too many similar entries, they tossed them all.  Besides being funny, they needed it to be original.