If you haven’t read about it before, the term comes from the band Van Halen, who demanded that there were no brown M&M’s backstage. People thought it was just a crazy rock star thing, but David Lee Roth later explained that it had a purpose:
Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We’d pull up with nine 18-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors—whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big enough to move the gear through.
… So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say, “Article 148: There will be 15 amperage voltage sockets at 20-foot spaces, evenly, providing 19 amperes … ” This kind of thing. And article number 126, in the middle of nowhere, was, “There will be no brown M&M’s in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.”
So, when I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl … well, line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error. They didn’t read the contract. Guaranteed you’d run into a problem. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show. Something like, literally, life-threatening.
My Brown M&M atm is AI-generated comments like this (first comment is referencing something like df = ... that they removed from the code, but left the comment, second comment is super useless):
# Assuming df is your DataFrame
# Show the plot
plt.show()
That probably means whoever I got the code from just copy/pasted whatever the LLM spit out, and didn’t actually think about the code at all.
What is a small detail that you pay attention to because it means there’s bigger issues to watch out for?
No idea what field you’re in, but of course you have to adjust it regularly. This year it’s brown m&Ms. Next year it’s a bowl of only yellow ones. The year after, it’s Skittles (no red ones). Kit Kats already split into individual bars. A bowl of Skittles mixed with corn flakes. Brown m&MS as decoy for people skimming for the clause, then later another one about 3 musketeers at the bar. I could come up with enough for an entire career without even leaving the candy realm.
It’s meant to be a very simple, but specific task that is easily performed by anyone that actually read and followed the instructions. It could be a bottle of Dr Pepper (as someone else mentioned), or wearing a yellow shirt upon arrival, or calling the lead “Chief”
Mostly I was being snarky, I can’t recall a situation where I’ve been concerned enough to leave such a tell.
Though there is a good warning there: if people expect you are leaving a tell they will look for it. Splitting kit kat bars is easy and obviously not something you really care about except to check so they do that, then skimp on the hard things you care about in hopes that you don’t crawl under the stage to check the bracing is done right. Thus whatever tell you leave make sure there are a few that are hard enough to check that they think you won’t.
The M&Ms are to avoid ACCIDENTAL problems caused by not paying attention to detail.
If they read the guidelines, purposely disregard them and try to hide it, that’s a whole different kind of negligence that’s pretty much out of your hands.
everyone knows that. People pay more attention when they know you check and the most where they think you will check. the only reason for the m&m thing is it is easy to check so anyone who has heard of this will be extra careful to do that. Meanwhile the hard to check places might be ignored. The m&m work well when it came off as spoiled brats asking for something stupid. Nevermind the dangerious fireworks on an unsupported stage, those brats screamed about the m&ms.