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%% Image removed per Image Pickin' thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=1311747770043340500
%% Please start a new thread if you'd like to suggest an image.
%%
You're flipping through a magazine, and there are almost always captions under the pictures (save for ads), but some magazine editors admit they can't do the best at them. So they offer the readers a chance to do better, usually challenging them to "Beat this caption." So if you can write a better caption than the magazine writers, it'll appear in the next issue, and maybe even win the contest. Any further prizes are optional.
Of course this doesn't just end with magazines. Web sites have them as well. They tend to be popular on [[MessageBoard forums]].
A SubTrope of AudienceParticipation, CaptionHumor.
Compare LetsSeeYOUDoBetter, OfficialFanSubmittedContent.
----
!!Examples:
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:Comic Books]]
* "Write On!" was a single page story in ''ComicBook/ThePowerpuffGirls'' (DC issue #54) where all the dialogue balloons were blank. Readers were entreated to fill in the missing dialogue.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* ''Series/HaveIGotNewsForYou'' has this round (almost) OnceAnEpisode with odd-looking photos [[ItMakesSenseInContext taken from news stories]].
** A 2003 episode ground to a halt just before the end as the guests, Creator/RubyWax and Glenda Jackson, appeared not to understand the concept, with both of them asking what the "real" answer was and Jackson complaining that Wax's team had been given a photo and hers hadn't (prompting GuestHost Martin Clunes to shout, "Well, if you'll WIND YOUR NECK IN we'll get your picture out!").
* The [[Creator/{{Syfy}} Sci-Fi Channel]], back when they first started airing the eighth season of ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000, had "Caption This!", a 24/7, [=MST3K=]-themed caption game based on screenshots taken from a live feed of whatever Sci-Fi had on at the time. Not really a "contest", per se, as all what really happened was that the captions stayed up until they were flushed out by new ones in time, but still the same general idea.
* On ''Series/TheOfficeUS'' Pam puts up a funny drawing she made of a Sabre printer for a caption contest in the office. The other employees make suggestions which insult Sabre products, much to the chagrin of Gabe, the Sabre company's representative and he bans the contest.
* In the second series of ''Series/GreenWing'' Statham wins an online caption competition on the ''Consultant Radiologists International'' website. Under the picture of an X-Ray he puts the caption "X-Ray Charles" and wins with 100% of the votes (which turns out to be [[spoiler:seven]]). He's extremely pleased with this and boasts it around the hospital, annoying Joanna who decides to return him to his miserable former self which results in him murderering her dwarf cousin, the two of them fleeing the law and eventually [[spoiler:commiting double suicide]].
* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E17TheFever The Fever]]", Flora Gibbs enters a caption contest and wins an all expenses paid trip to UsefulNotes/LasVegas.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Magazines]]
* ''Maxim'' magazine.
** A good one was a picture of a guy with three dozen cigarettes in his mouth. The winning caption was, "Huey Lewis will do anything to get attention these days," but just as good was the runner-up, "In vain, he tried to postpone his execution."
*** [[MemeticMutation GENTLEMEN]]
* ''Magazine/TheNewYorker'' runs a weekly caption contest.
* ''Magazine/{{Dragon}} Magazine'' had a few of these with black-and-white single-panel comics in its later years.
* Satirical magazine ''Punch'' ran a famous and long-running competition to find new captions for old cartoons featured in its pages a century earlier...
* ''Magazine/NickelodeonMagazine'' had a caption contest at the end of each issue ("Say What?").
* The serious technical weekly publication ''Electronic Engineering Times'' featured a weekly "Immortal Works" feature. A famous piece of classical artwork was shown, and readers were asked to send in captions related to electronics, computers, or engineering in general. The winners would be "immortalized in genuine print".
** Back in the days when there was a personal computer manufacturer named "Wang", readers went to great lengths to [[RunningGag fit it in]] to their captions.
** All-time winner was for Pietro da Cortona's [[http://todaysnewsart.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/cortona_rape_of_the_sabine_women_01.jpg "Rape Of The Sabine Women"]]: [[spoiler:'''Woman at upper right''': "Hey, Louise! I'm looking right at his Wang and it's this big!"]]
* The British Army in Germany in the '80s used to issue a magazine teaching their troops about Warsaw Pact forces, and it sometimes ran these contests. One picture showed two soldiers riding in a ridiculously tiny armored vehicle -- it looked smaller than a jeep (not a Humvee; a ''jeep''). The winning caption had one of the riders complaining that their vehicle had been a full-sized tank, until the other guy made a ''witch'' angry....
* An Australian military newspaper had a contest like this, called "Say Again, Over".
* A gun magazine had a contest showing the inventor of the Silent Partner bullet-resistant vest doing his famous stunt where he shoots himself while wearing the vest. The photo was of him doing this with a .44 Magnum with captions like "Guns and dyslexia don't mix".
* ''Magazine/PrivateEye'' does this occasionally, possibly because there are some obvious jokes they'd rather blame on the readers (one example involved a photo of the then chief schools inspector, known to have had a relationship with a former student when he was a teacher, pointing something in a book to a schoolgirl).
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Newspapers]]
* ''The Age'', a newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, runs a weekly caption contest called "The Adventures of Naked Man" in which readers have to caption an illustration similar to those found in Boy's Own style adventure, except one of the participants is naked.
* Creator/NancyCartwright had a caption contest in the newsletter she sent to her fans. The earliest ones involved Bart or other characters from ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', but later the contest pictures were drawn by Creator/JimMeskimen.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Web Based]]
* ''WebVideo/TheFundayPawpetShow'' runs a weekly caption contest (when they remember to find a picture), the results of which are displayed along with the Art Jams, Pawtweets, and "Garrison Skunk's Top 40ish Quotes of the Week".
* [=PointlessWasteOfTime.com=] used to do something like this: Wong would post a picture and challenge people to come up with captions. This has since been taken over by Cracked.com after the merger.
** This was also a regular game in the short-lived online SpinOff of the late 1990s.
* Creator/TheBBC.co.uk Magazine section runs one now and then.
* ''Website/{{Neopets}}'' does caption contests every week.
* [[http://eggycaption.livejournal.com/ Eggycaption's Journal]] offers up a pic for captioning (nearly) every weekday.
* ''[[http://www.cracked.com Cracked]]'' holds a daily Craption contest: whoever comes up with the stupidest caption makes it to the home page.
* One female troper was [[http://www.manatheater.com/images/caption/caption3.htm one of the winners of a caption contest]] for ''Webcomic/SecretOfManaTheater''. It had two categories, pure text (which she won) and Photoshopping.
* The webcomic ''Webcomic/BrunoTheBandit'' has them sometimes, for the single strips. (Most often, cartoonist Ian [=McDonald=] will deliver them later by himself.)
* ''[[http://www.icanhascheezburger.com/ I can has cheezburger?]]'' chooses its daily WebOriginal/LOLCats with a caption contest: the visitors write the caption in the Lolcat Builder, and the best caption is featured in the home page.
* ''Franchise/StarWars'' fan site [[http://www.theforce.net/humor/ TheForce.net]] had a caption contest in its humor section, but it hasn't been updated for a while.
* ''Literature/HarryPotter'' fan site [[http://www.mugglenet.com/cc/ MuggleNet.com]] has a weekly caption contest. Warning: May be filled with in-jokes involving HufflepuffHouse and GEICO.
** "Weekly", of course, meaning "whenever Eric gets around to updating it".
* In the "online forum/blog" variant, Website/{{Fark}} will periodically offer farkers a chance to caption an odd picture, usually one featuring erstwhile dignified and newsworthy persons. (We're looking at you, Mr. President.)
* ''Twin Skies'', an under-production MMORPG by Meteor Games, had one before it went back under the knife. It used screenshots of tests of the game.
* The Adventure Game Studio forums used to host regular "Caption Contests", where one user mashed a couple of completely unrelated pictures together and then challenged other users to make a (vaguely) coherent comic out of this.
* ''Webcomic/{{Mezzacotta}}'''s infrequently-updated strip ''Awkward Fumbles'' is basically a Caption Contest webcomic. Comics are drawn with word balloons but no dialog, which other readers submit.
* The ''[[http://www.ditl.org Daystrom Institute Technical Library]]'' (a ''Franchise/StarTrek'' fan site) has a monthly one, involving pictures of all {{Live Action|TV}} ''Star Trek'' series in rotation.
* Trek BBS also has regular threads on the subject.
* "Caption This!" mentioned above lasted until the reruns stopped airing in the mid-2000s, it inspired numerous other websites started by loyal participants knowns as "Cappers". One such notable site is [[http://www.hipsoda.com/caption/ Hipsoda's Caption Crack]]
* ''Webcomic/SquareRootOfMinusGarfield'': Parodied in the "Dialogue Contest" two-parter. The punchline of a ''ComicStrip/{{Garfield}}'' comic was blanked, and a note at the bottom tells viewers to mail in a letter with the missing dialogue, with the winner getting a "free Garfield wristwatch". Two weeks later, the "result" was published, being the original comic with a caption reading "Thanks to Felicity Wogglesbottom, age 6, for the winning entry!" The author explains that [[TakeThat he thought the original dialogue sounded like something a six-year-old would write]], but [[SincerityMode admits that he kind of likes the comic anyways]].
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Western Animation]]
* This is the focus of the last BreatherEpisode of ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'', entitled "Blenanas". The in-universe magazine ''BLE'' has one of these of a caveman with a saber-toothed cat biting his leg while lying on a therapist's couch. Finn's caption for it is "OUCH! HEY THIS ISN'T HELPING!" Finn is determined to prove his caption is hilarious, but the only one who agrees with him is the Ice King, who was laughing more at the picture and has his own caption. "Hey, Doc, I've got a caveman in my teeth!" The winning caption? [[spoiler:"I'm going to write you a prescription for one giant club."]] Finn and the Ice King didn't find that one funny.
[[/folder]]
----
%% Please start a new thread if you'd like to suggest an image.
%%
You're flipping through a magazine, and there are almost always captions under the pictures (save for ads), but some magazine editors admit they can't do the best at them. So they offer the readers a chance to do better, usually challenging them to "Beat this caption." So if you can write a better caption than the magazine writers, it'll appear in the next issue, and maybe even win the contest. Any further prizes are optional.
Of course this doesn't just end with magazines. Web sites have them as well. They tend to be popular on [[MessageBoard forums]].
A SubTrope of AudienceParticipation, CaptionHumor.
Compare LetsSeeYOUDoBetter, OfficialFanSubmittedContent.
----
!!Examples:
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:Comic Books]]
* "Write On!" was a single page story in ''ComicBook/ThePowerpuffGirls'' (DC issue #54) where all the dialogue balloons were blank. Readers were entreated to fill in the missing dialogue.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* ''Series/HaveIGotNewsForYou'' has this round (almost) OnceAnEpisode with odd-looking photos [[ItMakesSenseInContext taken from news stories]].
** A 2003 episode ground to a halt just before the end as the guests, Creator/RubyWax and Glenda Jackson, appeared not to understand the concept, with both of them asking what the "real" answer was and Jackson complaining that Wax's team had been given a photo and hers hadn't (prompting GuestHost Martin Clunes to shout, "Well, if you'll WIND YOUR NECK IN we'll get your picture out!").
* The [[Creator/{{Syfy}} Sci-Fi Channel]], back when they first started airing the eighth season of ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000, had "Caption This!", a 24/7, [=MST3K=]-themed caption game based on screenshots taken from a live feed of whatever Sci-Fi had on at the time. Not really a "contest", per se, as all what really happened was that the captions stayed up until they were flushed out by new ones in time, but still the same general idea.
* On ''Series/TheOfficeUS'' Pam puts up a funny drawing she made of a Sabre printer for a caption contest in the office. The other employees make suggestions which insult Sabre products, much to the chagrin of Gabe, the Sabre company's representative and he bans the contest.
* In the second series of ''Series/GreenWing'' Statham wins an online caption competition on the ''Consultant Radiologists International'' website. Under the picture of an X-Ray he puts the caption "X-Ray Charles" and wins with 100% of the votes (which turns out to be [[spoiler:seven]]). He's extremely pleased with this and boasts it around the hospital, annoying Joanna who decides to return him to his miserable former self which results in him murderering her dwarf cousin, the two of them fleeing the law and eventually [[spoiler:commiting double suicide]].
* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E17TheFever The Fever]]", Flora Gibbs enters a caption contest and wins an all expenses paid trip to UsefulNotes/LasVegas.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Magazines]]
* ''Maxim'' magazine.
** A good one was a picture of a guy with three dozen cigarettes in his mouth. The winning caption was, "Huey Lewis will do anything to get attention these days," but just as good was the runner-up, "In vain, he tried to postpone his execution."
*** [[MemeticMutation GENTLEMEN]]
* ''Magazine/TheNewYorker'' runs a weekly caption contest.
* ''Magazine/{{Dragon}} Magazine'' had a few of these with black-and-white single-panel comics in its later years.
* Satirical magazine ''Punch'' ran a famous and long-running competition to find new captions for old cartoons featured in its pages a century earlier...
* ''Magazine/NickelodeonMagazine'' had a caption contest at the end of each issue ("Say What?").
* The serious technical weekly publication ''Electronic Engineering Times'' featured a weekly "Immortal Works" feature. A famous piece of classical artwork was shown, and readers were asked to send in captions related to electronics, computers, or engineering in general. The winners would be "immortalized in genuine print".
** Back in the days when there was a personal computer manufacturer named "Wang", readers went to great lengths to [[RunningGag fit it in]] to their captions.
** All-time winner was for Pietro da Cortona's [[http://todaysnewsart.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/cortona_rape_of_the_sabine_women_01.jpg "Rape Of The Sabine Women"]]: [[spoiler:'''Woman at upper right''': "Hey, Louise! I'm looking right at his Wang and it's this big!"]]
* The British Army in Germany in the '80s used to issue a magazine teaching their troops about Warsaw Pact forces, and it sometimes ran these contests. One picture showed two soldiers riding in a ridiculously tiny armored vehicle -- it looked smaller than a jeep (not a Humvee; a ''jeep''). The winning caption had one of the riders complaining that their vehicle had been a full-sized tank, until the other guy made a ''witch'' angry....
* An Australian military newspaper had a contest like this, called "Say Again, Over".
* A gun magazine had a contest showing the inventor of the Silent Partner bullet-resistant vest doing his famous stunt where he shoots himself while wearing the vest. The photo was of him doing this with a .44 Magnum with captions like "Guns and dyslexia don't mix".
* ''Magazine/PrivateEye'' does this occasionally, possibly because there are some obvious jokes they'd rather blame on the readers (one example involved a photo of the then chief schools inspector, known to have had a relationship with a former student when he was a teacher, pointing something in a book to a schoolgirl).
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Newspapers]]
* ''The Age'', a newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, runs a weekly caption contest called "The Adventures of Naked Man" in which readers have to caption an illustration similar to those found in Boy's Own style adventure, except one of the participants is naked.
* Creator/NancyCartwright had a caption contest in the newsletter she sent to her fans. The earliest ones involved Bart or other characters from ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', but later the contest pictures were drawn by Creator/JimMeskimen.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Web Based]]
* ''WebVideo/TheFundayPawpetShow'' runs a weekly caption contest (when they remember to find a picture), the results of which are displayed along with the Art Jams, Pawtweets, and "Garrison Skunk's Top 40ish Quotes of the Week".
* [=PointlessWasteOfTime.com=] used to do something like this: Wong would post a picture and challenge people to come up with captions. This has since been taken over by Cracked.com after the merger.
** This was also a regular game in the short-lived online SpinOff of the late 1990s.
* Creator/TheBBC.co.uk Magazine section runs one now and then.
* ''Website/{{Neopets}}'' does caption contests every week.
* [[http://eggycaption.livejournal.com/ Eggycaption's Journal]] offers up a pic for captioning (nearly) every weekday.
* ''[[http://www.cracked.com Cracked]]'' holds a daily Craption contest: whoever comes up with the stupidest caption makes it to the home page.
* One female troper was [[http://www.manatheater.com/images/caption/caption3.htm one of the winners of a caption contest]] for ''Webcomic/SecretOfManaTheater''. It had two categories, pure text (which she won) and Photoshopping.
* The webcomic ''Webcomic/BrunoTheBandit'' has them sometimes, for the single strips. (Most often, cartoonist Ian [=McDonald=] will deliver them later by himself.)
* ''[[http://www.icanhascheezburger.com/ I can has cheezburger?]]'' chooses its daily WebOriginal/LOLCats with a caption contest: the visitors write the caption in the Lolcat Builder, and the best caption is featured in the home page.
* ''Franchise/StarWars'' fan site [[http://www.theforce.net/humor/ TheForce.net]] had a caption contest in its humor section, but it hasn't been updated for a while.
* ''Literature/HarryPotter'' fan site [[http://www.mugglenet.com/cc/ MuggleNet.com]] has a weekly caption contest. Warning: May be filled with in-jokes involving HufflepuffHouse and GEICO.
** "Weekly", of course, meaning "whenever Eric gets around to updating it".
* In the "online forum/blog" variant, Website/{{Fark}} will periodically offer farkers a chance to caption an odd picture, usually one featuring erstwhile dignified and newsworthy persons. (We're looking at you, Mr. President.)
* ''Twin Skies'', an under-production MMORPG by Meteor Games, had one before it went back under the knife. It used screenshots of tests of the game.
* The Adventure Game Studio forums used to host regular "Caption Contests", where one user mashed a couple of completely unrelated pictures together and then challenged other users to make a (vaguely) coherent comic out of this.
* ''Webcomic/{{Mezzacotta}}'''s infrequently-updated strip ''Awkward Fumbles'' is basically a Caption Contest webcomic. Comics are drawn with word balloons but no dialog, which other readers submit.
* The ''[[http://www.ditl.org Daystrom Institute Technical Library]]'' (a ''Franchise/StarTrek'' fan site) has a monthly one, involving pictures of all {{Live Action|TV}} ''Star Trek'' series in rotation.
* Trek BBS also has regular threads on the subject.
* "Caption This!" mentioned above lasted until the reruns stopped airing in the mid-2000s, it inspired numerous other websites started by loyal participants knowns as "Cappers". One such notable site is [[http://www.hipsoda.com/caption/ Hipsoda's Caption Crack]]
* ''Webcomic/SquareRootOfMinusGarfield'': Parodied in the "Dialogue Contest" two-parter. The punchline of a ''ComicStrip/{{Garfield}}'' comic was blanked, and a note at the bottom tells viewers to mail in a letter with the missing dialogue, with the winner getting a "free Garfield wristwatch". Two weeks later, the "result" was published, being the original comic with a caption reading "Thanks to Felicity Wogglesbottom, age 6, for the winning entry!" The author explains that [[TakeThat he thought the original dialogue sounded like something a six-year-old would write]], but [[SincerityMode admits that he kind of likes the comic anyways]].
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Western Animation]]
* This is the focus of the last BreatherEpisode of ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'', entitled "Blenanas". The in-universe magazine ''BLE'' has one of these of a caveman with a saber-toothed cat biting his leg while lying on a therapist's couch. Finn's caption for it is "OUCH! HEY THIS ISN'T HELPING!" Finn is determined to prove his caption is hilarious, but the only one who agrees with him is the Ice King, who was laughing more at the picture and has his own caption. "Hey, Doc, I've got a caveman in my teeth!" The winning caption? [[spoiler:"I'm going to write you a prescription for one giant club."]] Finn and the Ice King didn't find that one funny.
[[/folder]]
----
to:
%% Please start a new thread if you'd like to suggest an image.
%%
You're flipping through a magazine, and there are almost always captions under the pictures (save for ads), but some magazine editors admit they can't do the best at them. So they offer the readers a chance to do better, usually challenging them to "Beat this caption." So if you can write a better caption than the magazine writers, it'll appear in the next issue, and maybe even win the contest. Any further prizes are optional.
Of course this doesn't just end with magazines. Web sites have them as well. They tend to be popular on [[MessageBoard forums]].
A SubTrope of AudienceParticipation, CaptionHumor.
Compare LetsSeeYOUDoBetter, OfficialFanSubmittedContent.
----
!!Examples:
[[foldercontrol]]
[[folder:Comic Books]]
* "Write On!" was a single page story in ''ComicBook/ThePowerpuffGirls'' (DC issue #54) where all the dialogue balloons were blank. Readers were entreated to fill in the missing dialogue.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Live-Action TV]]
* ''Series/HaveIGotNewsForYou'' has this round (almost) OnceAnEpisode with odd-looking photos [[ItMakesSenseInContext taken from news stories]].
** A 2003 episode ground to a halt just before the end as the guests, Creator/RubyWax and Glenda Jackson, appeared not to understand the concept, with both of them asking what the "real" answer was and Jackson complaining that Wax's team had been given a photo and hers hadn't (prompting GuestHost Martin Clunes to shout, "Well, if you'll WIND YOUR NECK IN we'll get your picture out!").
* The [[Creator/{{Syfy}} Sci-Fi Channel]], back when they first started airing the eighth season of ''Series/MysteryScienceTheater3000, had "Caption This!", a 24/7, [=MST3K=]-themed caption game based on screenshots taken from a live feed of whatever Sci-Fi had on at the time. Not really a "contest", per se, as all what really happened was that the captions stayed up until they were flushed out by new ones in time, but still the same general idea.
* On ''Series/TheOfficeUS'' Pam puts up a funny drawing she made of a Sabre printer for a caption contest in the office. The other employees make suggestions which insult Sabre products, much to the chagrin of Gabe, the Sabre company's representative and he bans the contest.
* In the second series of ''Series/GreenWing'' Statham wins an online caption competition on the ''Consultant Radiologists International'' website. Under the picture of an X-Ray he puts the caption "X-Ray Charles" and wins with 100% of the votes (which turns out to be [[spoiler:seven]]). He's extremely pleased with this and boasts it around the hospital, annoying Joanna who decides to return him to his miserable former self which results in him murderering her dwarf cousin, the two of them fleeing the law and eventually [[spoiler:commiting double suicide]].
* ''Series/TheTwilightZone1959'': In "[[Recap/TheTwilightZoneS1E17TheFever The Fever]]", Flora Gibbs enters a caption contest and wins an all expenses paid trip to UsefulNotes/LasVegas.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Magazines]]
* ''Maxim'' magazine.
** A good one was a picture of a guy with three dozen cigarettes in his mouth. The winning caption was, "Huey Lewis will do anything to get attention these days," but just as good was the runner-up, "In vain, he tried to postpone his execution."
*** [[MemeticMutation GENTLEMEN]]
* ''Magazine/TheNewYorker'' runs a weekly caption contest.
* ''Magazine/{{Dragon}} Magazine'' had a few of these with black-and-white single-panel comics in its later years.
* Satirical magazine ''Punch'' ran a famous and long-running competition to find new captions for old cartoons featured in its pages a century earlier...
* ''Magazine/NickelodeonMagazine'' had a caption contest at the end of each issue ("Say What?").
* The serious technical weekly publication ''Electronic Engineering Times'' featured a weekly "Immortal Works" feature. A famous piece of classical artwork was shown, and readers were asked to send in captions related to electronics, computers, or engineering in general. The winners would be "immortalized in genuine print".
** Back in the days when there was a personal computer manufacturer named "Wang", readers went to great lengths to [[RunningGag fit it in]] to their captions.
** All-time winner was for Pietro da Cortona's [[http://todaysnewsart.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/cortona_rape_of_the_sabine_women_01.jpg "Rape Of The Sabine Women"]]: [[spoiler:'''Woman at upper right''': "Hey, Louise! I'm looking right at his Wang and it's this big!"]]
* The British Army in Germany in the '80s used to issue a magazine teaching their troops about Warsaw Pact forces, and it sometimes ran these contests. One picture showed two soldiers riding in a ridiculously tiny armored vehicle -- it looked smaller than a jeep (not a Humvee; a ''jeep''). The winning caption had one of the riders complaining that their vehicle had been a full-sized tank, until the other guy made a ''witch'' angry....
* An Australian military newspaper had a contest like this, called "Say Again, Over".
* A gun magazine had a contest showing the inventor of the Silent Partner bullet-resistant vest doing his famous stunt where he shoots himself while wearing the vest. The photo was of him doing this with a .44 Magnum with captions like "Guns and dyslexia don't mix".
* ''Magazine/PrivateEye'' does this occasionally, possibly because there are some obvious jokes they'd rather blame on the readers (one example involved a photo of the then chief schools inspector, known to have had a relationship with a former student when he was a teacher, pointing something in a book to a schoolgirl).
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Newspapers]]
* ''The Age'', a newspaper in Melbourne, Australia, runs a weekly caption contest called "The Adventures of Naked Man" in which readers have to caption an illustration similar to those found in Boy's Own style adventure, except one of the participants is naked.
* Creator/NancyCartwright had a caption contest in the newsletter she sent to her fans. The earliest ones involved Bart or other characters from ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'', but later the contest pictures were drawn by Creator/JimMeskimen.
[[/folder]]
[[folder:Web Based]]
* ''WebVideo/TheFundayPawpetShow'' runs a weekly caption contest (when they remember to find a picture), the results of which are displayed along with the Art Jams, Pawtweets, and "Garrison Skunk's Top 40ish Quotes of the Week".
* [=PointlessWasteOfTime.com=] used to do something like this: Wong would post a picture and challenge people to come up with captions. This has since been taken over by Cracked.com after the merger.
** This was also a regular game in the short-lived online SpinOff of the late 1990s.
* Creator/TheBBC.co.uk Magazine section runs one now and then.
* ''Website/{{Neopets}}'' does caption contests every week.
* [[http://eggycaption.livejournal.com/ Eggycaption's Journal]] offers up a pic for captioning (nearly) every weekday.
* ''[[http://www.cracked.com Cracked]]'' holds a daily Craption contest: whoever comes up with the stupidest caption makes it to the home page.
* One female troper was [[http://www.manatheater.com/images/caption/caption3.htm one of the winners of a caption contest]] for ''Webcomic/SecretOfManaTheater''. It had two categories, pure text (which she won) and Photoshopping.
* The webcomic ''Webcomic/BrunoTheBandit'' has them sometimes, for the single strips. (Most often, cartoonist Ian [=McDonald=] will deliver them later by himself.)
* ''[[http://www.icanhascheezburger.com/ I can has cheezburger?]]'' chooses its daily WebOriginal/LOLCats with a caption contest: the visitors write the caption in the Lolcat Builder, and the best caption is featured in the home page.
* ''Franchise/StarWars'' fan site [[http://www.theforce.net/humor/ TheForce.net]] had a caption contest in its humor section, but it hasn't been updated for a while.
* ''Literature/HarryPotter'' fan site [[http://www.mugglenet.com/cc/ MuggleNet.com]] has a weekly caption contest. Warning: May be filled with in-jokes involving HufflepuffHouse and GEICO.
** "Weekly", of course, meaning "whenever Eric gets around to updating it".
* In the "online forum/blog" variant, Website/{{Fark}} will periodically offer farkers a chance to caption an odd picture, usually one featuring erstwhile dignified and newsworthy persons. (We're looking at you, Mr. President.)
* ''Twin Skies'', an under-production MMORPG by Meteor Games, had one before it went back under the knife. It used screenshots of tests of the game.
* The Adventure Game Studio forums used to host regular "Caption Contests", where one user mashed a couple of completely unrelated pictures together and then challenged other users to make a (vaguely) coherent comic out of this.
* ''Webcomic/{{Mezzacotta}}'''s infrequently-updated strip ''Awkward Fumbles'' is basically a Caption Contest webcomic. Comics are drawn with word balloons but no dialog, which other readers submit.
* The ''[[http://www.ditl.org Daystrom Institute Technical Library]]'' (a ''Franchise/StarTrek'' fan site) has a monthly one, involving pictures of all {{Live Action|TV}} ''Star Trek'' series in rotation.
* Trek BBS also has regular threads on the subject.
* "Caption This!" mentioned above lasted until the reruns stopped airing in the mid-2000s, it inspired numerous other websites started by loyal participants knowns as "Cappers". One such notable site is [[http://www.hipsoda.com/caption/ Hipsoda's Caption Crack]]
* ''Webcomic/SquareRootOfMinusGarfield'': Parodied in the "Dialogue Contest" two-parter. The punchline of a ''ComicStrip/{{Garfield}}'' comic was blanked, and a note at the bottom tells viewers to mail in a letter with the missing dialogue, with the winner getting a "free Garfield wristwatch". Two weeks later, the "result" was published, being the original comic with a caption reading "Thanks to Felicity Wogglesbottom, age 6, for the winning entry!" The author explains that [[TakeThat he thought the original dialogue sounded like something a six-year-old would write]], but [[SincerityMode admits that he kind of likes the comic anyways]].
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[[folder:Western Animation]]
* This is the focus of the last BreatherEpisode of ''WesternAnimation/AdventureTime'', entitled "Blenanas". The in-universe magazine ''BLE'' has one of these of a caveman with a saber-toothed cat biting his leg while lying on a therapist's couch. Finn's caption for it is "OUCH! HEY THIS ISN'T HELPING!" Finn is determined to prove his caption is hilarious, but the only one who agrees with him is the Ice King, who was laughing more at the picture and has his own caption. "Hey, Doc, I've got a caveman in my teeth!" The winning caption? [[spoiler:"I'm going to write you a prescription for one giant club."]] Finn and the Ice King didn't find that one funny.
[[/folder]]
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