Tiny mini-rant

[taimatsu]

A swift rant about something driving me nuts on and off at the moment.

Kittens. People. Two different things.

You are not a kitten. Your friends and social group are not kittens. Bisexuals are not kittens. Only kittens, young instances of the animal commonly called a cat, are, in fact, kittens. Please remember this. Thank you.

Comments

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

Just out of interest, why do you have a problem with it? What is it that narks you about people doing this that you can't just brush aside, ignore, or accept?

[taimatsu]

Mostly I do. Mostly I read something like this, say to myself 'How silly!' and move on. But there are times when I just want people to Grow Up and talk like adults, not weird kiddie-twenty-something hybrids, twenty-four going on five years old. There are a few things I can never totally ignore - very poor spelling/grammar/punctuation/language use is one. Total self-absorption is another (though that would take a while to explain properly). And giggly over-fluffiness is another. I don't mind it occasionally, but as a regular thing, and in writing, it just annoys me. Doesn't everyone have a few things that just nudge them the wrong way? Maybe I'm not laid-back enough.

[softfruit.livejournal.com]

Obvious if tangential: if you don't like total self-absorption, LJ must be agony! Even I have some idea of what obsessive belly-button-fluff inspection my LJ is.

I loosely agree with you on the above rant though.

As I'm going off at tangents, there's a sign on the way to work that is killing me at the moment. It's a menu at a cafe, on which they manage to spell chilli as chile. The thought of being served thousands of square miles of south america for lunch scares me. It's quite cheaply priced, but I suppose they'd make a profit from the amount you'd have to spend on drinks to wash it down with.

[taimatsu]

There's general self-absorption, of which I am guilty as much as anyone, and there is TOTAL TOTAL MIND-BOGGLING SELF-CONGRATULATORY SELF-ABSORPTION, which drives me mad. But it is more complicated than that, and I don't want to write an essay explaining it right now :) Few people are guilty of the latter variety, fortunately.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

Oddities just intrigue me.

I wouldn't say you're not laid-back enough. I think (and please let me take the opportunity to remind you, and myself, and the viewers at home [hi everybody] that I don't really know you that well, so what I think is based on a remarkably small selection of observations which, whilst perhaps individually astute, may combine to form erroneous conclusions) that the things you react to in this way are things that you, on some level, take very personally.

I'm not sure of the exact word to describe it, but possessive is possibly closest (yet still vastly inaccurate, so please don't hit me) in the sense that you're quite protective of the opinions you form of them, and certainly in the case of the whole spelling/grammar/punctuation package, you act as if people's misuse of them, and contravention of standard rules of application, will somehow damage your language.

I will, once again, reiterate that I may, in all likelyhood, have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about, and that the opinions expressed above are Whacked-out Deductions from Rikk's Whacked-out Brain™, and that should you take exception to them, please try to not take them seriously, or in the absence of a fist of salt.

[taimatsu]

You have a point, yes. I don't know why. It's just a big You Are Doing This WRONG feeling, and there are some things which have to be done my way or they are WRONG. Very few things. And I don't often make a big deal of them per number of examples. If I get a hundred emails with crappy SPG I might be snarky about one or two of them. If that happens over a week then that's twice in a week, which seems a lot. Hmm.

There are other things too, but the one I am thinking of is way too complicated to explain.

Crappy spelling etc. does damage my language. Not my language as in the actual words I speak or write - someone's use of 'ur' for 'your' isn't going to infect my brain while I sleep and cause me to wake up thinking in netspeak - but rather in a more general sense. It's that if such things go unchallenged, slowly 'ur mah bestest buddie an i luv u 4eva' will become more and more acceptable and mainstream, and interesting, useful, attractive, beautiful parts of the language will vanish. Already, 'flaunt' and 'flout' which are different words with different meanings, are becoming conflated because people use them wrongly.

All languages evolve, but I'd prefer not to see English evolve into sumth1n lyke di5, y0.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

Well, it's their language too, and things come into common usge for a reason.

[taimatsu]

Yes yes, but don't you see, they're WRONG. They are. They just are. Really.

[crocodilewings.livejournal.com]

And the day you can prove that in a court of law is the day the world shall be free of the constraints of poor English.

[taimatsu]

Well, exactly. It's a personal crusade, and people are free to disagree with me, and then ignore and/or flame me if I annoy them too much. But they're still WRONG, and a thousand thousand grammar books, English teachers, librarians, and philologists agree with me.

[kizzie.livejournal.com]

nah...
thats thier opinions n stuff...
opinions are never wrong, you just don't have to agree with them

[odheirre.livejournal.com]

Oh, you are just flouting your knowledge of the English language :-).

My pet peeve is "its" versus "it's". That, and when people do stuff like "I want this approved by Jim and myself," which makes the speaker sound both pompous and stupid, which is no mean feat.

[jojomojo.livejournal.com]

Is flouting like flaunting?

[imc.livejournal.com]

No - it's playing a musical instrument.

[andrewwyld.livejournal.com]

Is absurd fluffiness really the same thing as not having things which nudge you the wrong way?

Granted, a lot of things do nudge me the wrong way, but that is something I'm trying to eliminate.

[taimatsu]

No, I think you misunderstand slightly. I'm not saying it is bad or absurdly fluffy to have no things which nudge you the wrong way. I think that's probably a good thing. Absurd fluffiness is one of those triggers for me, that's all.