I'm new obviously...and I seem to have annoyed a few people by ignoring "pings". I guess I'm just dumb, but what is a ping and how do you respond to it?

Pinging is when you put @ in front of a username (as seen above, with your own). You can also ping forum groups by using # and whatever tag they have.

but somone got really pissed because I didn't respond to one...how do you do that?

in events it'll say somebody's pinged you...click on it and it'll take you to the thread. im pinging you now

ooooh...I assumed they were just informative announcements. Thank you. That explains alot.

A ping is the sound of the microwave when your food is done XD

I was gonna post some witty comment here, but people beat me to it.