Excerpts From a Prominent Practitioner: Go read it for the while Frank J experience, all I have is the high points.
Caps Lock Is Your Enemy
Look at your keyboard. On the left should be a button labeled “Caps Lock.” Now, there should be a light somewhere indicating whether the Caps Lock key is on. You want that light to be off. If you can’t find the indicator light, try typing on screen. Do you see lower case letters? If not, hit the Caps Lock key and try typing again. When you get your keyboard to the state where it normally types lower case letters, NEVER EVER TOUCH THE CAPS LOCK KEY EVER AGAIN! I can use it because I’m a professional, but you crazy people just need to leave that key alone. This tip by itself will make a lot of you look 100% less crazy.
Not usually my problem...
i can haz proper grammar?
Here’s another pretty basic one: no lolcats speak. Write actual English sentences using real words and proper grammar. Capitalize the first word of each sentence. Use punctuation. there is no reason ur comment 2 a blog or column shud look lik ur a n00b at texting. You’re not writing these things from a old cellphone with just a number pad that lacks auto-complete; there is a big keyboard in front of you.
OK, I admit it, I'm a little shaky here. I tend to leave off the introductory stuff on simple sentences, which is the way I tend to talk. But I try to capitalize and don't abbreviate the stupid stuff.
No Long Screeds
On the other end of the spectrum from the lolcats speak is the guy who apparently has hours to spare writing pages of response as the 200th comment to some blog post. There are people who have long things to say, and they do it by writing columns or writing in their own blogs. But if you can’t get your column published and no one reads your blog, maybe you’re thinking you’ll get exposure by putting the long screed in the comments section of something people actually will read.
I don't think I'm too bad on this one; once in a while I'll go on a bit, but mostly it's just a brief reaction to the insanity that is life.
Proofread
Now, this is a problem even non-crazy people have, but crazy people seem to be the worst at it because they’re just so desperate to share their crazy with the world that they can’t pause for one second and read over what they wrote. I’m not asking for full editing — an error or two is expected to slip in on the internet — but insane people tend to have typing fingers that never come close to keeping up with their crazy brains bouncing around from topic to topic. Thus we get a single sentence with five glaring errors in it. It’s hard to imagine someone who writes like that has an interesting point. So after you write a comment, don’t listen to the crazy in your head shouting, “You need to share this now! Now! NOW!” Instead, take a deep breath and read it over before hitting the submit button.
Yeah, this one's definitely a problem. I have issue with being willing and able to proof read what I've written both on the blog, and what I write in real life. I often find errors long after I've punched the button. I'll try to do better.
Don’t Be Surprised When People Have Opinions Different From Your Crazy One
Now we’re getting into the more complex areas of not sounding crazy — not just superficial changes but actually adjusting the content of what you’re saying — so some of you extremely crazy people may want to jump off here and just concentrate on the first four tips I gave you.
Still with me? Anyway, if someone expresses an opinion that’s well known to be held by a supermajority of people, don’t act surprised by that opinion. For instance, I’ve seen atheists act shocked when they hear someone believes in God — even though surveys say something like nine in ten Americans believe in God, so there is no reason to be surprised by that.
Hmmm, I do tend toward the contrarian, but I try not to get angry with disagreement until:
No Living Person Is Hitler, and the World Isn’t Ending
I think even crazy people are aware of Godwin’s Law by now; they are just too crazy to care. Fight it. One easy way to identify yourself as crazy is to have no sense of scale. To a crazy person, every little bit of nonsense is a crisis of epic proportions that has to be handled right now (e.g., “If it isn’t recognized that Obama doesn’t meet my obscure definition of ‘naturalized citizen,’ then the Constitution will burst into flames and society will collapse!”)! If you are really convinced your issue is of world-ending significance, then it is all the more important that you curb your rhetoric to get people to listen to you. You may think screaming about how important your issue is will get more people to listen to you, but it just causes more people to dismiss you as crazy.
One thing about having "Fritz" as a first name (actually it's only a nickname), is that people tend to pull the "Nazi" card early and often. That does make me go crazy...
Respond to an Actual Point and Not Just Something That’s Been Mentioned
Ever watch a paid partisan shill who, no matter what is said, will go to his couple of talking points? Now that has less to do with being stupid or crazy than just being soulless, but lots of crazy people are the same way, going back to the crazy stuff they really want to talk about no matter what subject people are actually on. And often crazy people will just read until they see a word or phrase that sets them off and then go off on a big, crazy rant before even reading the whole thing they’re reacting to. Often, then, they’re completely missing the point or missing that something is satire and taking it seriously.
A lot of arguments on the internet go this way; two people talking past each other, as each tries to force his opponent to submit to his version of the facts. There's somebody who tries to inject Ralph Nader into every discussion. You know who you are.
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