Thank you bat

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The concept of a thank-you bat originated with a student-developed cartoon strip from California Institute of Technology called Crippling Depression,[1] which was later published.[2][3] The term was used in the strips We Hate Lecture.[4] In particular, the term is used to transpose the aggression felt by a student in a university lecture when another student side-tracks the university lecturer, resulting in a in-class discussion irrelevant to the topic at hand. The concept of a thank you bat uses sarcastic humor to illustrate the annoyance at a socially challenged geek.

A thank-you bat can be any bat that is used to be aggressive towards a particularly annoying individual, perhaps outside the lecture setting. A thank-you bat is not intended to be used against the individual in a harmful way, but to humorously identify the need for the annoying individual to cease the behavior.

In addition to the aforementioned description of a thank-you bat, Howard Dean has created a "Thank You, Howard Dean" bat[5] for fund-raising purposes for the Democratic Party (United States).[6]