comment thread cliché watch

The two most prominent clichés in the mass media comment thread I was just reading:

1. “nothing to see here… move along…” This is used as a sarcastic insinuation that the other commenters are being duped by the official government line on something when the truth is actually some deeper conspiracy, generally involving the notion that grotesque profiteering is the hidden driving force behind every human event.

2. “*crickets chirping*” Hate to say this, because it had a certain charm when it first appeared. This is used sarcastically as the imagined response of one’s opponent (namely, no response at all, so that crickets can be heard chirping in the dumbfounded silence) when that opponent is confronted with one’s own devastating line of questioning.