This troper remembers running down a slope, then being told "Stop right there!" then told to do five jumps. Doing six jumps resulted in having to do a "minus jump" and the conversation turned into time vortexes changing time and making people soldiers all their life and threesome sex with a shield bug-on your finger?

ThisTroper remembers a topic which could have been popular, but on the ''second'' post was abruptly changed to be about trees. It lasted up to the full 500 posts, and was then continued for another 250 posts in a new topic until a mod spoiled our fun.

This troper is a member of an RPG board that has a separate thread, called Vampire Jesus, that ''is'' its left field (said left field is now about the size of the outfield at the Polo Grounds). at least once a day, someone recommends that a discussion in an out-of-character thread be taken to VJ.

To go ''way'' back to the topic of threads that get off topic, this editor once saw a thread on the Wizards of the Coast message boards that started on determining the alignment and colour of a half blue dragon red slaad, then degenerated into a heated argument over whether or not you could make a pair of ten-foot poles by purchasing a ladder and cutting it into pieces. Also, when it looked like they would finally get back on topic, the ''same two posters'' began to bet large amounts of money on whether or not one could close an iron pot.

Could they?

This Troper on the message board for MarsInvestigations.net (where the articles would get edited) once saw a thread about the FAQ degenerate into being about ''Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead''. Heads. Heads. Heads.

Hmph. ''Pragmatism.'' Is that all you have to offer?

You seem to have no concept of where we stand!

The Hookie Dookie Panic forums went left field by second post. One guy announces he was going on a trip, and the others (including myself) start a literal flame war. Other fine points include no use of Dragon Skin armor, burning bunnies. Hell! I threw facehuggers on people in the Christmas thread.

This troper belongs to this webcomic forum where for reasons unknown this happens to almost every thread. One of the worst offenders started out as a complaint about a disease, discussed similar diseases for about 2 pages, then derailed onto the importance of caffeine, sleep and food, people's avatar images, and finally which fictional deity is cooler or could kill the others.

This troper used to be a top poster and doesn't remember that thread. Elaborate?

On a NaughtyTentacles message board a troper other than this one frequents, a thread in the "find someone to set up a scene with" forum was derailed by the question of whether a a she-male succubus would actually still count as a succubus, technically count as an incubus, or be something else like say possibly an omnibus.

Technically the demons known as 'Succubi' and 'Incubi' are named not after gender but position ('lies below' and 'lies above') so a shemale of that demonic type would be named based on what position they took during coitus. 'Lies beside'?

MadeOfWin.

Wow, those omnibuses are pretty damn sexy.

This troper finds that on her home forum, MontyPython quotes are an excellent way to change the subject randomly when a topic has outlived its usefulness. Or when it hasn't...

This troper likes plain old dill pickles. Sorry, fancy kinds.

"!selkciP tohs I !selkciP tohs I !selkciP tohs I"

There was this one forum where somebody completely forgot the {{MST3K Mantra}} and talked about Rouge the Bat's fate in a crossover minigame collection. As you'd imagine, nobody took him seriously, so what did we do? Took the thread in completely different directions, of course!

This troper frequents this forum where certain threads can end up going into tangents, like photography or even different types of meat. One of these forum-goers is actually called Tangent.

There is a thread in the [[strike:EGS]] Mayhem board that went off-topic in it's ''first'' post. It's still running, at around 2000 pages.

Closer to 3000 by now.

This troper frequents a message board for fans of a certain band. A running joke is that by the fifth page of any topic, it will have degenerated into either 1) debates about which member was better looking when (said band just passed the decade mark), 2) natter about Harry Potter, or 3) politics. Some threads can make it to ten pages of comments without falling into Off-Topic Hell, but not many.

There was a thread on a forum this troper frequents which went off topic on the third post. Appropriately, the thread was called 'too easily distracted'.

This troper saw a thread with the first post about abortion turned into a thread about beans in chili in the second post, probably to avoid a FlameWar. Oddly enough, that thread wound up lasting longer than most flame wars did.

A ''SuperSmashBros Brawl'' forum site began a thread on tiers, which eventually degenerated into reply after reply based on the meme "That (X) is a pretty cool guy. eh kills (Y) and doesn't afraid of anything."

The B-Movie Message Board has specified topics for this, the "Random" threads. That doesn't prevent it happening to other threads, but it helps.

This page is now about people who do this in real life. Like me. I think it comes with being a bit of a CloudCuckooLander. Have you ever noticed how when you're going home from somewhere, the songs on the radio stations always sound less upbeat and more mellow?

Or how in the winter, whenever a Beach Boys song comes on, the air seems to feel a little warmer

Do their Christmas songs count?

This troper has been accused of being this repeatedly, but most often, it's because she's a bit of a Cloudcuckoolander who can do a Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon with all kinds of topics.

speaking of which, why Kevin Bacon? Why not Miss Piggy?

Seven degrees of Miss Piggy Bacon? You are a sick, sick troper.

Also, it's ''six'' degrees of separation, not seven.

At a forum ThisTroper goes to, on the local Spam Boards rule list, Rule 'Train' states "All spam threads must be derailed. It's law." And the rule was a quote of something that ThisTroper had said.

This troper remembers one instance in which a thread that was definitely starting to go into a political FlameWar was spontanouesly and intentionally shut down by a bunch of people posting as much {{Squick}} as they could find, all out of the blue. It was ''glorious'', somehow.

Also, this same troper wonders why TroperTales still use the ThisTroper conciet even though it's all about personal experiences. This troper now demands discussion here about this subject.

Awkward zombie threads often fall under this. http://www.awkwardzombie.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1494 that thread used to be about burn after reading

This troper has gone to a couple of forums where the acceptable method of stopping an unpopular poster is to post the lyrics to Linkin Park songs one line at a time.

A forum this troper used to frequent explicitly had a thread called "Random Thoughts and Ideas" which was explicitly for these random kinds of postings. The thread reached a truly epic 1000 pages before the forum was hacked and it was lost to history. Another forum she visits does something similar, only theirs is called "Random Neuron Fun."

In a more straight usage, a thread originally about funny game screenshots on the same forum degenerated into a discussion of weird foreign delicacies. After it got back to the topic of screenshots, it fell apart again into a debate about the merits of {{Shipping}}.

This troper does it ''all the time'' and considers it a fundamental character trait. But enough about me, let's talk about hamsters.

This troper attends an imageboard for comics where a thread was derailed by a single mispelling that spawned a rather large Velociraptor who solves crimes along side his french maid. Also, it went from religion in comics to sex with Mary poppins in about 100 posts, with 4 or 5 topics in between.

This troper was around when the accepted way of dealing with trolling on a particular board was to talk about waffles and post recipes for them. Most of the recipes were quite good, too. ...this page is now about waffles. (#)

These ones got peanuts 'n' soap in 'em!

I tend to do on purpose in order to derail a sucky thread, with my most common left fielder being "this topic is now about pants, and why we hate them."

Lloyds apparently doesn't like pants.

This Troper was having a discussion on... something on a forum, but at the same time, was discussing wherther there was any Black Panther pop music alongside the original topic. In case you wondered, none that TT and his friend could think of. [=MC5=] came closest.

This troper tends to ''be'' the LeftFielder. Admittedly, more in a chat context than a forum one.

This troper can proudly proclaim that the Naruto board on GameFAQs is NOTORIOUS for this. For example, Captain_Luke, KisAtchi, ChetleyDew, LightningHero and many others. For eample, a topic discussing whether Pein was broken suddenly made like a train and got derailed VERY badly into a flame war about whether Kakuzu damaged Kakashi with a lightning attack or not. This troper was left wondering "What do Kakuzu's Gian attack and Kakashi's gloves have to do with Pein being broken?"

A Flame war can also derail a topic pretty fast enough if it's started by Yamato77, who literally thinks he's the best debater EVAR. Hell, ANY single VS topic at all can end up in flames faster than you can say "Only Kyo Kusanagi can start forest fires!"

And It just got worse, ladies and gentlemen. This troper once again braved the GameFAQ Naruto boards and noticed a topic on whether Pein/Pain was a rip off of Gaara before the Timeskip or not. By the SECOND page, Topic Derailment happened so fast it could have outstripped {{Sonic The Hedgehog}}. By the SECOND PAGE ITSELF, they were talking about Chocobos, topless girl photos and who was the biggest e-bully on there. You read it here, ladies and gents, a Naruto topic gets derailed so badly, it made This Troper LOSE FAITH in humanity. If one is brave, one can check out the beginning of the decline of humanity as a competent species here

Would you believe that what you thought had gotten worese GOT MORE WORSE? This topic What went wrong with it? At first it was this entirely innocent discussion about what would happen hypothetically if Kakashi Hatake had two Sharingans and Uchiha blood. One post onthe first page was worrying but by the SECOND PAGE, THE SECOND FREAKING PAGE OF THE GODDAMN TOPIC, it was now about black people and the history of racism. Despite many tries by the posters who remembered what the damn topic was about in the first place, in the end, the mods locked it and the Topic Creator had to make ANOTHER topic with the exact same name and descriptio. Yes, it got THAT BAD. There's a reason why This troper only uses the site for [=FAQs=] now.

I have an interesting example ({{NSFW}} text in spoilers) A thread on 4chan, a guy asked "When I took a shit, I got up off the toilet and saw yellow liquid in the bowl. I didn't piss, should I be worried? but the image he posted with it was of a train. The next poster said "Wait, hold up. Is that train real?" The next poster said "I fucking love trains! Posting a picture of another train. The guy after him "This thread is now about trains" Some 50 posts later the OP breaks up the train related discussion with a cry of "Just tell me why there's yellow liquid coming out of my ass!" to which the next poster said "Not while the issue of the train is unresolved!"

Here's proof: [[http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/trains.jpg]]

This troper is pretty much the embodiment of this trope, seeing as his mind works on two tracks. He will always have two streams of thought, and both of them will be very hard to move. It is why, after five minutes analyzing Watchmen with a friend, he completely diverted the discussion into a discussion about Deathnote.

One thread on the Geist-Panik forum went from discussing the current comic, to a necromancy argument, to a necromancy fight, to bashing Twilight. The thread has pretty much derailed, crashed horribly, and exploded.

One particularly hated troll at a board I visit became the victim of this. All of the regulars got so tired of his crap that any thread he posted would immediately be derailed, and everyone else would go along with the derailment, while the rest of the board remained on topic. Good times.

This troper tries to avoid it on internet fora, but he and his entire family are {{Left Fielder}}s in regular conversation. Talking with a particular person, the entire conversation can get so far out of left field that it falls off the top of the bleachers behind the right foul line, keeps going to the next town, and ends up in that ballpark where the left fielder ''there'' tries to throw it in for the out. Metaphorically. Please excuse any incorrect baseball terminology.

This used to be about a mock-write contest thing. This one is still going.

This troper is also notorious for doing this in real life and on IRC. It comes from a diverse set of interests, an overactive imagination, and a tendency to be thinking of half a dozen things at once. He's gotten blank stares from many of his classmates, all of his family members, and most of his friends at at least one point. It doesn't help that he tends toward cloudcuckoolander, so not only is he lobbing things out of left field, they're coming from vast, untapped reserves of left field. A prime example was a lengthy discussion of One Piece that diverted into penguin mating habits by way of Greek mythology. No, I don't even know how these things are connected.

This Troper is horrible to talk with in chats/conversations because she tends to go onto a WikiWalk without any of her friends knowing and then randomly spouting whatever was on her mind that only somewhat relates to the topic, but to her it makes perfect sense. She wonders why her friends put up with her.

This troper and her friends have been known to do this, though normally only to each other. The ultimate Left Fielder moment, however, has to go to a friend of my cousin's boyfriend. My aunt (the mother of the cousin) was at a party to meet said boyfriend for the first time. The friend walked up to her and, without so much as introducing himself, said "So...what do you think of midgets?"

One thread on Facepunch randomly went from "Generally just Fucking creepy stuff thread" to chain posting lyrics from the theme song of TheFreshPrinceOfBelAir. I joined in for the hell of it. (Un)fortunately, it was broken when someone posted "Stop." The first post of the chain Go back to Everything Is Better With Monkeys.

I disagree. Monkeys don't make very good pets. Potatoes, on the other hand...

I ate a potato once. It was okay. I would much rather have been playing Boggle, though.

But Boggles taste awful.

Not with a little salt.

I prefer dill. It makes everything taste nice and tangy.

See, I prefer bread-and-butter. Unless we're not talking about pickle chips. Thick, crunchy slices of pickle, that is, not salt-and-vinegar crisps. Say, are you the troper in the main section who was talking about liking dill pickles? Must remember to check the edit history before too long.

Shit Pickle. Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiit pickle. Pickle pickle pickle, shit pickle.

But why check history when you can have a GuideDangit?

WHAT'S GOING ON?!

Just a game of baseball, also your name is now The Doctor

Now see, I like pickles well enough and all, but not as much as I love olives. God, I fucking love olives. Who else loves olives?

Are cherries a kind of olive? If so I like olive pie.

Well, they both have pits.

Tar also has pits. So Tar's a kind of olive then?

I hear Egypt is nice this time of year.

You hear wrong. Antarctica's where it's at.

It's cold and very blue there. Speaking of blue, if someone has heterochromia, what do they put down as their eyecolor on their licenses?

They would put Banana.

Why Banana? Why not Plantain?

Because everyone loves Bananas, where as Plantains are an aquired taste.

I don't like bananas :(

Have you tried different kinds? My favorite are tangerines.

Tangerines are good. A cat is fine too.

And speaking of cats, aren't the clouds lovely?

NO.

Well, I know SOMEBODY who isn't getting any cookies.

Good. I wanted cake.

But the cake is a lie!

OrIsIt?

and speaking of cake...

ENOUGH ALREADY!!!!!