Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Another annoying internet fad

I've been reading a lot at Balloon Juice lately (it's hard to believe he was ever a wingnut, but the posts are out there) and I've noticed an annoying trend. I may have seen it at Kevin Drum's place too, but I'm not positive.

This annoying thing is the practice of taking a quote from the comment thread, striking through certain words and replacing them with something that either mocks the original comment or attempts to make it clever and saying "Fixed" underneath. This may have been mildly amusing the first 3 or 4 billion times it was done, but now it's just tired and stupid. Look, if you have something clever or interesting to say, just fucking say it. The attempt to be cute now just makes you looks silly and unoriginal. Especially at the aforementioned Balloon Juice, where I've now seen this same construction back-to-back more than once, and multiple times by multiple people in the same thread. Enough already!

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10 comments:

John Howard said...

This annoying thing is any annoying internet fad that tries to be clever. This may have been mildly amusing the first 3 or 4 billion times it was done, but now it's just tired and stupid. Look, if you have something clever or interesting to say, just fucking say it. The attempt to be cute now just makes you looks silly and unoriginal.

Fixed.

John Howard said...

Now I fell all dirty.

Also, Blogger does not allow the strikethrough tag in comments, so they're doing their part.

Chris Howard said...

Also, Blogger does not allow the strikethrough tag in comments, so they're doing their part.

Ahh, I was going to mention that your parody wasn't entirely accurate. Good for blogger. In general, even outside of this particular construction, I find that the strikethrough tag is overused. It's the text equivalent of Jim Rome's "Er.." to say one thing and say another at the same time.

Toast said...

Damn, I would have sworn that post was written by John.

Chris Howard said...

Yeah, it does seem to be a very John-like sentiment. In contrast to John, I like useful(emoticons) and funny(lolcatz), but stuff like this just seems like people trying too hard to be clever.

John Howard said...

I'm also fed up with people quoting another person's comment and then just adding "This"

If you don't actually have anything to say, then don't say anything.

Chris Howard said...

Another annoying commenter behavior I've seen more recently is someone saying that some other commenter wins. As if every comment thread is a competition to see who can generate the most clever response.

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