Thank you bat

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.23 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 an 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" bat5 for fund-raising purposes for the Democratic Party (United States).6