Why Everyone is Stupid

[davidn]

I 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.

Comments

[gr33bo.livejournal.com]

I agree with most of but not "alot". While I don't use it often I would argue that it's perfectly valid. I forget who posted it a few months back, but there was a comment Stephen Fry made about language evolution. To use his example, if you accept the word "meld", then you have to accept that language does evolve - meld being a mix of 'melt' and 'weld'.
If language didn't evolve we might be spelling lyke thys

[diarytypething.livejournal.com]

I must be looking at the wrong bits of the internet, because I've never even heard some of these. 'Beta read' I have heard of before, because it gets used a lot in the context of fanfiction, but I don't know if that's where it originally came from.

Maybe there should be a compulsory grammar test for anyone who wants to use the internet without parental supervision.

[kitschyduck.livejournal.com]

Y'know, I only found out that 'alot' wasn't one word a couple of years ago. I also thought 'noone' was one word until this year! D'oh!

I have to say though, I do love the o_O face. It can mean so much! Everything in moderation however!

Plus, I've only just discovered the beauty of using full stops. for. emphasis. Although it works best when I'm at my angriest haha.

You have no idea how hard it is to give up the 'LOL' addiction! I've just begun to try to phase it out of using it every other sentence.

[kibet.livejournal.com]

lol is better to use than S for smirk, nf for nostril flare, mnf for mild nostril flare so it is much easier to just use lol. funnily enough if i am using pml "peeing myself laughing" or rofl/lmao/roflmao then I am actually grinning widely with amusement or actually am laughing out loud yet i would not use lol. Also I never use lol in text messages.

I use k as an acknowledgement as that i have read something but not to say I am okay.

myb w shld jst nt typ wth vwls t sv tm, lthgh tht s vry dffclt!

[the-twilighted.livejournal.com]

But surely "evolution of language" requires there to be either a change in meaning of an existing word or a coining of an entirely new word. If that is so, then the use of "alot" is not evidence of the evolution of language. It means nothing different than "a lot".

Also, although I've heard it said elsewhere, I doubt that "meld" is a mix of weld and melt. There's a dialect word "melled" which means "mingled" or "blended". I'd suggest that is a much more likely candidate to be the origin of meld.

[bonappetite.livejournal.com]

arabic doesn't use vowels.
I hate that I have (for some time now) not captialised the first letter of the word in the first line of an internet posting. I got it from the Sinner when I'd start what I was going to say in the headline and then continue the sentence in the regular text box. Thus the rest of the post was generally correct, but not the first line.



:-p I used to hate smileys, but then I realised people didn't know I was joking half the time. I used to neveer use txt speak but then I'd have a lot to say and want to fit it into one or two pages of text.

[gr33bo.livejournal.com]

Surely you could argue that "alot" is coining a new word.

For Meld's origins - see here (2nd set of definitions): http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/meld

But even if it turns out that meld was from a dialect word - then why should we accept "don't" instead of "do not"? Presumably "don't" derived from the way some dialect said "do not" - so it got abbreviated, I'm sure if the internet was around during that period there'd be people complaining about those young upstarts missing out that all important 'o'. The way many people say "a lot" makes it sound like one word - why can't it be written so?

[starfishchris.livejournal.com]

The difference between 'meld' and 'alot' depends on whether you believe the etymology that meld is a portmanteau (I don't) rather than a gradual spelling change. Alot is no different to everybody, something etc. which started life as two-word phrases but were slowly combined - nearly always by the US, I hasten to add, and it's no exception here.

As regards how people say things, many people (mainly youngsters) write "should've" as "should of" because that's how it sounds to them. Should we allow that? Where do we draw the line? Do we draw any line?!

[iluena.livejournal.com]

I think you make many valid points. There are a few things that stand out to me. For instance, I often come across people who don’t know the difference between the your and you’re, and also the four there’s. It is perfectly simple and yet so many make the same mistakes. I am thankful that I had a very old fashioned English teacher at one of my schools that drummed in the grammar.
As for the ‘k’, I hate that with a passion. It is so damn lazy. For a long time I had no clue as to what ‘kk’ stood for and I felt so stupid for having to ask someone. It was the same with ‘lol’ when people started sending me that when I had my first mobile phone years ago. I thought it stood for ‘lots of love’ and so naturally I was perplexed by certain people sending that to me. So, I think that users of the internet everywhere should be aware that not everyone can comprehend what on earth they are talking about when they abbreviate everything out of sheer laziness, or use stupid emicons. Half the time I have no clue at what they are trying to portray.

Oh, and as for the ‘lol’ I also have a deep seated hate for that. It annoys me when I am chatting to someone online or you are having a text conversation (so to speak) and the response to something is ‘lol’, why the hell do you bother to answer in the first place? If they are just going to reply with ‘lol’ then they clearly have no adequate response to what you are talking about and thus should not reply at all. I find it most annoying with people who should know that you don’t always expect a reply.

I have to admit to being a bit of a hypocrite, I do use it, but mostly when I would naturally laugh during the course of a conversation and even then I use ‘hehe’ quite often.

I remember a while back about something to do with text speech and exams. I think it was something to do with the kids not getting marked down as much for bad grammar. I’m not sure if it is true but I remember a couple of friends being adamant that it was and I grew so enraged because we are going to end up with a generation of people who can’t read, write or spell.

I apologise in advance if I offend people. I see people my age and younger who are at university but have the most horrible writing in the world. It is that horrid bubble writing, the writing that takes up the whole space between the lines on the ruled page. I hate it so much, so much that I get so annoyed when I even think about it. I get complemented a lot about how pretty my writing is, and you know why that is? It’s because I join it up. Only God knows what on earth people are taught at school, but it certainly isn’t cursive writing.

[e-to-the-ipi.livejournal.com]

My writing's horrible, it has the tendancy to vary in size and direction when I'm not looking. And to be completely scrawl-like.

[gr33bo.livejournal.com]

Well even if meld isn't a portmanteau (excellent word by the way), I still don't see why 'alot' can't join the ranks of 'everybody' etc.

In terms of 'should of'...I dunno - I'm inclined to say that given that it's mainly a mistake made by kids and that 'of' is not a replacement for 'have', that it should not be allowed. 'Alot' doesn't change the meaning of the sentence really as it can be defined as a synonym for 'many' (I'm presuming the issue is referring to 'many' as opposed to say "A lot in an auction")

[starfishchris.livejournal.com]

When I made my comment earlier I wondered why I objected to 'alot' so much when it's no different to 'everybody'.

Except that it is. You don't fuse a word with its article, and to the best of my knowledge it never has been done until now. If 'alot' is acceptable then so is 'I took thedog for a walk' and 'I ate anapple'.

If it continued like that, eventually articles becomes redundant and we get rid of them altogether like some languages. Personally I can't imagine how such a large change can ever happen, especially with 'the' being the most-used word in the English language.

[starfishchris.livejournal.com]

[iluena.livejournal.com]

i wasn't talking about untidy handwriting, but that bubble writing that looks like a five year old has written it. I'd call my writing messy but others seem to like it.

[davidn]

Well, at least you didn't put in in Blink tags.

[davidn]

Something I scanned for the FA forums:

[davidn]

The story about textspeak being allowed in exams is absolutely true - it was New Zealand that introduced it last year. After exploding and seething for a while, though, I realized that there was really quite a legitimate reason behind it - it allows shorthand in exams.

When at St Andrews, exams were the only thing I handwrote all year - this is probably because of being in computer science, but I imagine that people in other departments have the same problem, particularly if they take notes on a laptop. Taking into account my lack of practice at it (remember writing the first thing at school after a summer holiday and seeing how dreadful your handwriting was after seven weeks?) I had to cram ten pages worth of writing into two hours, which was asking for painful hand cramp. If some form of shorthand was allowed when a lot of writing is expected, then that could only be a good thing - exams are meant to test what you know, not how fast you can write it out! I'm not sure why we weren't allowed to write out our exams on the computer (if it was completely isolated from all Internet connections and prewritten notes opportunities), though.

That said, people who use it in English exams need to be shot.

[davidn]

People's ability to detect sarcasm on the Internet is not stellar, but perhaps it's because there's no real way to indicate it in text. I've actually just remembered something very interesting about this that I'll post about later - that the idea of emoticons had been suggested as early as the 19th century to make written language clearer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irony_mark

[gr33bo.livejournal.com]

That's true, which is why I put in the exception of "a lot in an auction". "A lot" as used to mean "many" isn't really the same because it's an adjective, and it's only an synonym for "many" when used as the whole phrase "a lot". "an apple" and "thedog" aren't the same because the article is followed by a noun. (apologies by the way for switching between " and ' in my posts - trying to figure out which I find more comfortable)

"A lot" is a grammatical oddity really - I'm trying to think of something that's similar to it.

[starfishchris.livejournal.com]

Adjective is not the word you're looking for, try pronoun. 'A lot' or 'lots', 'many', 'few', 'a'... they qualify the number of whatever noun you're talking about. 'lot' on its own is a noun anyway.

'A lot in an auction' - an item (lot is the noun)
'A lot of things' = 'a large number of things' ('a lot' is the phrase acting as pronoun, just like 'a large number')

Hardly an oddity or any special case either.

[davidn]

I was rather afraid that that was where it originated - along with that weird "description!person" syntax that I have never been able to understand.

[gr33bo.livejournal.com]

Bleh - been a long while since I did this kinda stuff. I thought pronouns were substitutions for nouns - he, she it etc.

Regardless
I think it is a special case - I can't think of another synonym for "many"/"few" that is a phrase as opposed to just a word.

[diarytypething.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's another fanfic thing. The description part is usually for when you've written/read something which concentrates on one aspect of a character, or shows them acting differently for some reason, for example emo!person, or drunk!person. It doesn't make a lot of sense out of context, but it's a shorthand term, so probably isn't meant to.

[e-to-the-ipi.livejournal.com]

Wow, that looks good. You can read it!

[davidn]

Well, I seem to have started a bit of a debate and then not been part of it, but I just thought of this - isn't the "lot" still the noun, but with an added qualifier as to what the "lot" is made up of? Meaning that "lot of things" as an entire phrase is the noun. (I honestly can't remember the grammatical terms for these at all, I'm getting better at Java syntax than English. A container class, if you like.)

As for things that are similar to it, "a couple" and "a few" are used in much the same way (although "few" doesn't then require "of". Stupid language).

There is one word that managed to get the "a" concatenated on to itself, and that's "awhile", though I'm quite uncomfortable using that as it still looks wrong to me. It took me ages to remember what it was.

[davidn]

I don't think I explained my problem with "lol" as well as I could have - as a shorthand or an indicator it's probably all right as it's difficult to communicate a nod or an acknowledgement over the Internet (I had no idea most of the examples you used above existed). It's when it's used as a punctuation mark, or as an interjection in a sentence, that it feels like being hit over the head with a hammer while reading.