There are some things that commenters say, not just on this board, but on the Internet in general that really make you come off as being less intelligent. As the owner of this site, I am not going to prohibit them, but I do want people to be aware that saying these things makes people want to ignore anything that you have to say. Call them my pet peeves. I will still post comments like this, but I can’t promise that I won’t roll my eyes while clicking the “allow publication” button, nor can I promise that I won’t make fun of you for it:
- Using “HONK!” in a comment. I get that you are trying to sound smart by calling things “clown world” but it really makes you look like a moron. When I see this, it is a sure indicator that the rest of the post will not make a coherent point and is guaranteed to be annoying. Make your point without it.
- Writing a comment that so poorly uses the common rules of English grammar that your post is indecipherable. Honestly, I just skip your comment without reading it when I see things with tons of deliberate misspellings and poor grammar. Life is too short to spend several minutes rereading your comment and trying to decipher what you meant to say.
- Don’t purposely misspell names to sound clever. Obozo, Teabaggers, Trumpf, Bushitler, Magats, all of those are juvenile put-downs that do nothing to forward a real exchange of ideas. It usually is a huge distraction from whatever point you are trying to make.
It reminds me of how people used “word” for everything back in the late 80s. You would say, “I love chocolate ice cream,” and someone would reply with: “Word.” Feel free to roast me for being a grumpy old man in the comments to this post.
13 Comments
Kronen · July 9, 2023 at 1:29 pm
Word came from the Cameo song word up with MTV video.
I’m always unbearable but do sometimes try to act human.
It is very annoying.
But, but, but, it is fun to mock quisling traitors with put downs and they have such thin skins.
Anonymous · July 9, 2023 at 1:46 pm
There’s another BIG reason to misspell words and use code words. To counter al gore rhythms of cancellation. See what I did there, al gore rhythms… heh heh…I’m not a smaht man, but I am pretty old.
Sorry, but I like yer site…and you ARE a smart man. Keep up the good work.
Foghorn Leghorn aka Tree Mike
WDS · July 9, 2023 at 2:45 pm
There used to be a little sports bar I visited from time to time and listening to the patrons at the bar used to drive me insane with their manner of speech and the way they elided & butchered words. You can only hear about Meemaw’s or Pawpaw’s “Oldtimers” or “Alltimer’s” so many times before you pleaded with the bartender for your tab so you could escape to the parking lot and solitude of your conveyance.
Big Ruckus D · July 9, 2023 at 4:33 pm
I’ll have to ask your indulgence then, as I’m not dispensing with “joey shitpants” , “pedo joey”, “the kidsniffer”, “the vice cocksucker, aka Montel’s sidepiece” and any number of other well deserved and appropriate portmanteaus and insults I like to frequently level at the walking, talking dogshit now masquerading as government officials.
Aside from that one quibble, I can’t disagree with the substance of the post. Mockery is, after all, a most potent weapon and I’ll be loathe to forego it’s use.
Oh, and that whole “word” thing? never did get it, despite knowing it’s origin. I’ll share your relief that it died out. A real cultural turd, that one was.
Noway2 · July 9, 2023 at 5:16 pm
I’ll admit that I do sometimes use the term Obozo or 0bozo with a zero.
Boneman · July 9, 2023 at 6:43 pm
It IS the internet. Sadly it brings out not the best nor the worst but sometimes the eccentric. Myself? I tend to wax sesquipedalian in hopes that the obfuscated will actually seek out the true meaning of my digressive bloviations. Or something. 😉
Anonymous · July 9, 2023 at 9:18 pm
The fox domestication experiments showed domesticated canines stop biting and start barking. I suspect humans have the same firmware, and the more ‘molon labe’ bumper stickers the less actual disobedience and subversiveness. People proud of how they satisfy every detail the ATF demands. In the Chinese, Russian, and German genocides of the 20T’s century the genocidal were the law-abiders. Who actually got away with stuff long-term on Breaking Bad? The vacuum cleaner salesman, who was the opposite of flashy.
Dan D. · July 9, 2023 at 11:41 pm
I was taking a summer class at the university and had a lab partner who wore Flojos and lived in a trailer back near the unincorporated part of campus. I was 15 and had never met a pothead but thought it funny when we were looking through a spectrograph and he reported the line as “tan.” Aside from that he had a deep vocabulary and disliked people over using the word “thing” as a replacement for the actual noun. It reminds me today of listening to people order at the restaurant, “I’ll do the chicken club.” I always think – after “you’re lazy” – “so you’re going to boink your sandwich?”
Guess I’m grumpy as well.
D · July 10, 2023 at 8:38 am
1,000 times yes.
My personal favorite is pretending you made up some cutesy name and then injecting it into conversation at every possible opportunity and then stopping to check the room to see if everyone got it.
Yeah–even my five year old know who you are talking about when you say that Biden is taking orders from “Oh butt ho”, and I don’t need him learning or using that phrase.
My other pet peeve is talking in code when it’s completely obvious to *everyone* what you’re talking about. I think my five year old is the only one who doesn’t know what you’re saying when you say “Anthony Faucci really needs to get a message from my high-speed wireless transmission device. *looks around suspiciously* …you know…my *45 caliber* high-speed wireless transmission device…”
Yeah. Everyone at every three-letter-agency would know *exactly* what you’re referring to if they were listening.
*sigh*
I hate stupid.
DrBob · July 10, 2023 at 10:25 am
I too am a bit of a language fanatic. It pains me to watch this beautiful mother tongue of ours be abused. Language, well used and crafted, can strip the bark off a hickory tree without ever invoking curses. But it takes a lot more effort than tossing the ‘f bomb’. Not that the f bomb is not at times appropriate (John Goodman’s speech in The Gambler). My other peeve is the abuse of pronouns. When my daughters were in their early teens, they would prattle on without a proper noun in sight. I broke them of the habit by staring blankly at them until they stopped their prattle, at which point I would inform them that they’d lost me in the pronoun forest. It worked!
Divemedic · July 10, 2023 at 11:20 am
The Goodman speech in the Gambler is one of the finest summaries of financial security ever put on film. I aspire to F-you money. I’m almost, but not quite, there.
On another related topic- English is a living language. That means we will be inventing new words and terms as they are needed: Internet, E-commerce, texting, those sorts of things. At least it is better than German with its compound words.
DrBob · July 10, 2023 at 6:42 pm
I have spread that speech to all of my children and friends and I thank you for the link. I had missed that movie originally. The quality of the dialogue is spectacular. I wish I had found it before I taught that Life Skills course as my HS students would have gotten it full-blast. Everybody needs their own John Goodman. Mine were my parents (albeit less profane), and ‘f-you’ money changes how one looks at every opportunity and problem.
I studied German in school and the way words are built is comical. English is far superior in it’s acquisition of the words of others and those made from whole cloth.
Wyowanderer · July 10, 2023 at 10:34 am
Thank you.
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