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Why Everyone is Stupid
Jun. 21st, 2007 03:16 pmI think it's fair to say that anyone who spends a significant amount of time on the Internet will eventually become mildly irritated at the overused words and phrases that people use, as well as the increasing tendency towards blatant gibberish becoming an acceptable way to communicate. "It's just the Internet" is no excuse - if you're writing something that you expect people to read or answer, then I would have thought that writing style was of paramount importance in an environment where you're entirely composed of written language. As you can probably tell I'm in a bad mood just now, because we've just been hit with another doctor's fee on top of our already ludicrous hospital bill for Whitney's teeth, and preaching about these is one of the things that I do best. Don't take any of this personally. Let's open with the obvious.
"Alot" - Right, stop doing this. Also, stop saying that language evolves, the excuse of illiterates down the centuries, when people tell you to stop doing this. Evolution doesn't happen because you're too stupid to know better. Strangely, when it's written wrongly like this it's common to see it emphasized by putting it in capitals, drawing even more attention to the inability of the user. I would have thought that you would know that these are two separate words, how to use apostrophes correctly and the difference between "you're" and "your" by the time you're out of, say, primary seven (and that's a phenomenally generous estimate if you ask me). This is the first and last purely grammatical issue that I'm going to include, so you're probably safe from now on.
"Law of averages" - Not exclusive to the Internet by any means, but it gets to me every time someone mentions it. It's not a law. It doesn't work. Stop it. I never liked it, but my aversion to it was heightened when some people were talking about statistics on Worse Than Failure (the half that are predominantly stupid rather than predominantly loud) and using it to disprove that there's an equal chance of getting heads or tails when a coin is tossed. Idiots, the lot of them.
"k" - An abbreviation of an abbreviation. "OK". There's no reason to use this unless you happen to be Jam from Weebl and Bob. Is one extra keystroke too much to ask? And no, not "kk" either - it's only half an inch to stretch over to the O. You don't even need to hold the shift key down if you don't want to.
"O_O" - I hate this emoticon and all its variants. I don't like any of them much, not because of what they are but because I feel that by using them I'm admitting that I'm not good enough at expressing myself in writing not to have to rely on them. But this is the worst of the lot. Variations include O_o and o_O, and I've seen them almost exclusively used as entire posts by clueless people on the Java forums, making it shorthand in my head for "I'm an idiot and don't know how to ask coherent questions or say what I don't understand". Even more deplorable is when you fill an entire page of a chatroom with variations of it and those appalling < and > shifty-eyes things in a flickbook-animated style. Get off my Internet.
"Get off my Internet" - If you say this you're clearly an intolerant bastard with an overinflated sense of self-importance. (In other words, a perfect personality match for the Worse Than Failure forums.) You probably spend your time putting together lists of Internet words and phrases you hate, you tedious individual.
"You win the Internet" - Perhaps the opposite to the phrase above. It was hilarious the first time, and mildly funny as I kept hearing it for about a year afterwards, but I've now seen this about five times a day since 2002 and it's beginning to grate a little.
"[Anything] FTW!" - [People who use this] STFU!
"Urbs" - This is how the Americans say "herbs". I can't understand why. This isn't a writing issue, but I just thought I'd throw it in while I was at it.
"Full stops. For. Emphasis." - Stop. Doing. That.
"Nomnomnom" - Shut up.
"Sheeple" - No.
"confused" - Now, here we have to pause a moment. I have no idea why I don't like this word. There's no underlying grammatical reason to dislike it, but I find myself avoiding using it wherever possible. It's an example of something that I don't like purely for the sound of it in my head rather than how it's used. I'm not mental, I promise.
"Beta read" - I saw this for the first time yesterday and after a moment of looking at it, just about worked out what it meant. If you don't understand it, it was meant to mean "proofread", in presumably the same way that software goes through a beta stage where it's almost complete and needs checking over by a wider testing audience. I can see how this sort of makes sense, but it doesn't quite sit right in my mind - the context it was used in was wildly inappropriate if the suspicions I have as to where the term actually comes from are correct.
"LOL" - The universal killer. A staple of AOL-speak, it was introduced to indicate "laughing out loud", even though I would be prepared to bet that 99.9% of the time it's used that the user isn't. Worse is when it's used as a sentence delimiter in stream-of-consciousness gibberish that lacks any other form of punctuation. Even when used in a paragraph that's at least vaguely coherent it's often simply added to the end of sentences, making me feel to mentally pronounce it as I read it lol. See how annoying it is? It is the hallmark of the terminally stupid and I despite it utterly.
And some people have the nerve to ask why I care about people's grammar and written language so much. It's because in my daily interaction with the Internet I'm forced to read such garbage - I consider it polite if people talk in a way that I'm at least vaguely able to parse. I'm off to smash things with hammers.
Oh, by the way, I just got a Featured Art on Sheezyart, so that's brightened things up a bit.
"Alot" - Right, stop doing this. Also, stop saying that language evolves, the excuse of illiterates down the centuries, when people tell you to stop doing this. Evolution doesn't happen because you're too stupid to know better. Strangely, when it's written wrongly like this it's common to see it emphasized by putting it in capitals, drawing even more attention to the inability of the user. I would have thought that you would know that these are two separate words, how to use apostrophes correctly and the difference between "you're" and "your" by the time you're out of, say, primary seven (and that's a phenomenally generous estimate if you ask me). This is the first and last purely grammatical issue that I'm going to include, so you're probably safe from now on.
"Law of averages" - Not exclusive to the Internet by any means, but it gets to me every time someone mentions it. It's not a law. It doesn't work. Stop it. I never liked it, but my aversion to it was heightened when some people were talking about statistics on Worse Than Failure (the half that are predominantly stupid rather than predominantly loud) and using it to disprove that there's an equal chance of getting heads or tails when a coin is tossed. Idiots, the lot of them.
"k" - An abbreviation of an abbreviation. "OK". There's no reason to use this unless you happen to be Jam from Weebl and Bob. Is one extra keystroke too much to ask? And no, not "kk" either - it's only half an inch to stretch over to the O. You don't even need to hold the shift key down if you don't want to.
"O_O" - I hate this emoticon and all its variants. I don't like any of them much, not because of what they are but because I feel that by using them I'm admitting that I'm not good enough at expressing myself in writing not to have to rely on them. But this is the worst of the lot. Variations include O_o and o_O, and I've seen them almost exclusively used as entire posts by clueless people on the Java forums, making it shorthand in my head for "I'm an idiot and don't know how to ask coherent questions or say what I don't understand". Even more deplorable is when you fill an entire page of a chatroom with variations of it and those appalling < and > shifty-eyes things in a flickbook-animated style. Get off my Internet.
"Get off my Internet" - If you say this you're clearly an intolerant bastard with an overinflated sense of self-importance. (In other words, a perfect personality match for the Worse Than Failure forums.) You probably spend your time putting together lists of Internet words and phrases you hate, you tedious individual.
"You win the Internet" - Perhaps the opposite to the phrase above. It was hilarious the first time, and mildly funny as I kept hearing it for about a year afterwards, but I've now seen this about five times a day since 2002 and it's beginning to grate a little.
"[Anything] FTW!" - [People who use this] STFU!
"Urbs" - This is how the Americans say "herbs". I can't understand why. This isn't a writing issue, but I just thought I'd throw it in while I was at it.
"Full stops. For. Emphasis." - Stop. Doing. That.
"Nomnomnom" - Shut up.
"Sheeple" - No.
"confused" - Now, here we have to pause a moment. I have no idea why I don't like this word. There's no underlying grammatical reason to dislike it, but I find myself avoiding using it wherever possible. It's an example of something that I don't like purely for the sound of it in my head rather than how it's used. I'm not mental, I promise.
"Beta read" - I saw this for the first time yesterday and after a moment of looking at it, just about worked out what it meant. If you don't understand it, it was meant to mean "proofread", in presumably the same way that software goes through a beta stage where it's almost complete and needs checking over by a wider testing audience. I can see how this sort of makes sense, but it doesn't quite sit right in my mind - the context it was used in was wildly inappropriate if the suspicions I have as to where the term actually comes from are correct.
"LOL" - The universal killer. A staple of AOL-speak, it was introduced to indicate "laughing out loud", even though I would be prepared to bet that 99.9% of the time it's used that the user isn't. Worse is when it's used as a sentence delimiter in stream-of-consciousness gibberish that lacks any other form of punctuation. Even when used in a paragraph that's at least vaguely coherent it's often simply added to the end of sentences, making me feel to mentally pronounce it as I read it lol. See how annoying it is? It is the hallmark of the terminally stupid and I despite it utterly.
And some people have the nerve to ask why I care about people's grammar and written language so much. It's because in my daily interaction with the Internet I'm forced to read such garbage - I consider it polite if people talk in a way that I'm at least vaguely able to parse. I'm off to smash things with hammers.
Oh, by the way, I just got a Featured Art on Sheezyart, so that's brightened things up a bit.
