Why Chickens?

I noticed on danbooru and gelbooru when you type in something in the search box that gets no results you get a message that reads "Nobody here but us chickens". I googled it and found it was from a Louis Jordan song. I still don't get it though... Is it some inside joke between the administrators? Any explanation would put me at ease.

It's just a standard American catchphrase.

Partridge, Eric, and Paul Beale. A dictionary of catch phrases: British and American, from the sixteenth century to the present day. Routledge, 1986. ISBN 9780415059169. pp. 4-5.

ain't nobody (or no one) here but us chickens! prec. by there, 'is applied to an occasion when unexpectedly few persons are present, but may also be used with the implication "and everybody else had better stay away!"' (P.B., 1976); adopted in UK c. 1950, from the US, where it had existed prob. since late or latish C19 and was based on a story about a chicken-thief surprised by the owner, who calls 'Anybody there?' and is greeted by this resourceful reply. Of the story itself, several variations inevitably exist, and the line became, c. 1950, the chorus of a popular song. That the c.p. is extant appears from this allusion in Frank Ross, Sleeping dogs, 1978: 'And no heroics, O.K.? If anyone comes knocking, there ain't no one here but us termites.'

No inside joke, no reference to Louis Jordan songs...

Incidentally the "Namasté" that you see in your user home page is a traditional Indian greeting .

0xCCBA696 said:
Incidentally the "Namasté" that you see in your user home page is a traditional Indian greeting .

Incidentally it used to choose a random greeting from a list of many in many languages, but that was a long time ago, before deadbooru I think. After that it was reduced to just Namasté.

Uh, wow, it must have been long before deadbooru, since I don't remember that. But cool, I guess.

deadbooru? gelbooru? im lost sorry could someone explain please?

Hmm, I thought it still did rotate welcome messages. That shows how observant I am I guess. But then I rarely log out and back in again.

"Deadbooru" refers to the incident about two years ago where Danbooru sort of imploded on itself and closed to the public due to capacity issues, lax rules, and general discontentment from both the moderation staff and the user base. This was long before the current rules, wiki, comment system, and this forum were set up.

Gelbooru was one of the *booru clones set up in the fallout of Danbooru closing to the public. It initially copied danbooru's database at the time, and forked from there, though I think they still have a system to pull content from Danbooru.

Ah that explains things, i do recall a couple of other websites that seemed similar so i guess those were of the same birth. thanks for clearing that up for me Shinjidude.

Chickens are funny but you solved many questions of mine. Thanks!

葉月 said:
Incidentally it used to choose a random greeting from a list of many in many languages, but that was a long time ago, before deadbooru I think. After that it was reduced to just Namasté.

I didn't realize it had stopped rotating. You just broke my little heart