Wednesday, February 25, 2009

There, Their and They're all tired of this crap

I'm going to show my nerd cred here but for the past three years or so I've been a member of a rather large Trek message board (to confound it more, I haven't watched Star Trek in probably four years at least. I'm a study in contradicitions). From that I have seen some of the lowest of the lows of the internet.

You got your Trolls that aim to anger up the blood of even the most docile of members. I always picture a Troll less as a large rock hiding under a bridge waiting for a goat to wander by and more as a large hornet that won't stop flying around a cow threatening to sting and just when its finally found that soft spot causes a stamped.

There are the flames. It's basically just a grade school playground shouting match to see who can come up with the better insults. Like Youtube commenters but with a richer lexicon as well as the opportunity to use one of billions of internet memes to show just how clever they really aren't.

The spammers are generally smacked with a small tin can and dead parrot and told to go away.

I've had a flame before and responded to that. Spammers generally get either a delete or if entertaining enough a mention.

Today I got visited by that most nefarious of troll. It's a sneaky troll because it passes itself off as being helpful, trying to offer advice when it is neither wanted or necessary.

I speak, of course, of the Grammar Nazi.

What the Grammar Nazi does is quote your post it doesn't agree with (or maybe it does, no one ever really knows) and then merly point out where you used an incorrect "there" or one too many commas all to show off their complete superiority in all of the world and how your entire argument is wrong because you are not MS spell check.

They will not add a damn thing to the discussion at all, and instead of anyone learning anything by once again finding out that oops they used "it's" instead of "its" they come across with a feeling that you just had your IQ zapped by about 5 points.

I don't know if I should dare to feed my own little Alphabets troll by informing him/her/it it's a wonder I got my other post out at all as in hitting blogger spell check it suddenly spell checked and deleted HTML on me so I had to go through and fix all my pictures and anything it tagged (Why does Cheddar always have to be capitalized anyway? Is someone named Cheddar?). Oh who am I kidding, they'll never be back anyway.

For the Grammar Nazi feeds like a flock of locusts, moving from one post onto the next feeding its insatiable hunger for a superiority complex. They're the type to sit on a pier watching someone try to dock a boat in horrible weather and after spying failed attempt after failed attempt when the mariner finally succeeds, instead of offering to help tell them how they would have gotten it in one go.

They get some strange high out of knowing that in their minds they are infallible. Everyone must be beneath them because they know how and when to use a colon! Oh when it comes to verbiage and useage they are like a god among men. Just what can be done with these interneters running around with a red pen trying to mark the whole world? Aside from giving them thousands of high school essays to grade not a damn thing sadly. Slip them some fodder every now and again (misuse of "there" and "its" is sure to cause them to all but orgasm) to keep the masses happy and just ignore it.

Oh and I look forward to someone finding all the mistakes I left in this. And . . . . . . Go!

2 comments:

Chesney said...

I would be in big trouble if they found me!

Unknown said...

I was just thinking about this today. And while I don't mind things like compliment/complement (because I honestly never knew there was a difference), it really bugs me when people point out things that could very well be typos. Like, seriously, if everything else in a post (or even most everything) is fine then one or two mess-ups don't need to be pointed out.