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The Message Is Clear Shielded behind anonymous screen names, posters, as they’re called on these boards, spew outrageous lies, despicable accusations, and all manner of hostile, vulgar, violent, vicious, angry, threatening, and hateful comments. Think of every derogatory racial, ethnic, political, religious, regional, age, gender, or sexual orientation slur you’ve ever heard, and you’ll see it expressed there. There are board monitors, and conduct standards, but those features are rarely evident. One rational poster accused the service provider of promoting hate. A reply followed saying it’s not hate they’re promoting, it’s stupidity. One person wrote, “95% of you would make Hitler proud.” Another said, “I’ve seen more intelligent interaction among the guests on the Jerry Springer show.” For the most part, posters are adults, but I use that label only to distinguish them from actual children. I won’t quote the gutter language used; no decent publication would print such material. Let’s look instead at the illiteracy. Although eight out of ten posters can correctly spell every four-letter word ever coined, they cannot (or choose not to) use proper capitalization, punctuation, grammar, and spelling. In fact, punctuation and capitalization are rarely used unless it’s a string of exclamation points or all caps for emphasis. Periods are almost nonexistent; the comments flow unbroken in a stream of consciousness, or unconsciousness in most cases. If apostrophes are inserted, they’re generally where they shouldn’t be rather than where they should. Most posters repeatedly confuse the use of then/than, it’s/its, a/an/and, to/too, accept/except, their/there/they’re, who’s/whose, quite/quiet/quit, loose/lose, know/no/now, where/we’re/were, and the majority use your when it should be you’re. Regarding the young King brothers in Florida who confessed to killing their father, someone wrote: “I think the boys were doing this hanus crime for what ever reason they desided what was thier reason for killing thier father if it was a good reason thani suport thier desion.” A woman said this about Rosie O’Donnell, who hired an attorney for the boys: “ROSIE HOW COULD YOU??????????? You was on the front line for gays and lesbians you helped me understand that way of life and i did ,but now i don't understand how could you spend your hard earn money on this case.I'm not for kids being put in jail but their is a line and this for SURE was it.How could you put your good name, good money on that LINE. y didn't you help that 12 year old kid who slame the 6 year old he was just doing what he saw on tv.well wwf should have(I know your saying that) shit if you wanna donate your money and time do it for fathers and kids like mine i gotta bust my ass 12/15 hours a day, my girls are talented but it hard too make time too work on it with them cause i'm trying too get rid of this morgaged.so if I was too fall a sleep and one of them cracked my skull open would that be fair too me?see that man is dead he can't talk but i'm talking for him. ROSIE AT LEASE HE CAME BACK TOO DO THE RIGHT THING ,'BE A FARTHER' now he's dead thats not right.” That comes from a woman who mastered using a computer, has the funds to pay for Internet service, who says she works 12-15 hours a day, but found time to sit at a keyboard and tap out a garbled message. The birth of a possibly cloned baby brought this reaction: “If you are going to be a parent do it propley!! Has any one thought about how the baby is going to feel. The world was a much better place before now and is just going down hill. This famous baby will probley be bullied when its older. I think who ever takes place in this showed be discussded with them selfs and if any thing does happen to this child it will be all there fault think about that one then.” The DC sniper brought hundreds of comments. Someone said about Police Chief Moose, “he dont speak no good english.” The term a right to bare arms brought laughable replies, as did aiding and abedding, cereal killer, the snipper using a riffle, sings of fowl play, waisting my time, urban gorilla, and several posters suggested that it’s time to close our boarders. Ironically, when one poster belittles another’s spelling, the same word or several others are often misspelled. One can usually discern what the words are meant to be, but this baffled me: “hose we good theroises.” My guess is “those be good theories.” Try these: notsies, blaim, disiervs, cart blanch, britest angles, chasos, siknes, prigilege, feorigners, imbicles, suburbien warfair, un-biast, torchured, veichl, raciasists, saporting, legeallised, danagrous, justus, hayters, prejudgdiced, exepcially, caucationas, ediot, alound (allowed), canseling stuph (canceling stuff), igrea (I agree), and iridicoualous/redulious/redecilous. When someone occasionally suggests that messages might be taken more seriously if they weren’t riddled with errors, the replies come quickly, the consensus being that spelling, grammar, and punctuation are unimportant on these boards. The complainant is scorned as whiny, a perfect human being, a snooty intellectual. Of course, those terms are rarely spelled correctly. Reminders to use Spellcheck are useless. Spellcheck would explode from the burden. One person claimed, “It’s the nature of e-mail that typos occur.” Typos are an electronic glitch? As they say in online lingo, LOL (laugh out loud). The problems seen on these boards go far beyond simple typos. Speed seems to be the first priority, as if the message is so profound there simply isn’t time to proofread it. Citing freedom of speech, one poster added that spelling and grammar are just another set of rules imposed on people. From another, “what is worring you is that you disagree whit some comments and like a true liberal you want to take away posts you dont like. FREE SPEECH, its in our Constution!” “Coming to the defence,” someone wrote, “people have a right to speak there mind without spelling snobs or grammar police coming down on them.” Another argued, “Your over reacting. This is not a job application.” A woman stated that she “had a life and had no time to worry about spelling.” Posters who identified themselves as educated, some as teachers, sent messages with errors. These “educated” posters stated that sentence structure and spelling are unimportant on opinion boards. It’s the content of the message that counts. Let’s pretend for a moment that the message is more important than how it’s written. “You no what i was just thinking about that i belive you. I am 14 and smart i was just talking to my mom and dad and told them that now the person knows there looking for a white van that they might get another car or have more then one car. If the police keeps checking white cars the person might shoot somebody and then take the gun and put it up some where at there house or something ypu know you have the right idea if the person is smart they whould not ride around with the gun they could stop any body in a white van i sure whould not go and ride around with the gun” Using online shorthand, a poster said, “nothing but problems that all these people are good 4 when is it giong 2 be time 2 do some thing about it when every1 dead we are only giving them time 2 spread out. get rid of them all . y do we care so much they dont. blow them all up take the oil and set a flag call it usa #2 . its only the begining unless the usa does something quick. they are winning i wont leave the house not scared woundering if im next look what they are doing 2 the other places they need help. what if there were 5 sniper in 5 diff places” “they new what there doing and know should pay.” “I have not seen but very few people on here that can speak intelegently about this very heart breaking tradgety. don’t let other peoples statements swing you from your own intelengence. “everone is complainging about a damne snipper I dont evern no what that is” “i think your rite. its not thiere falt.” “driveby shotting gose on an on everrywere." “i stay in the house and do not got out i don’t keep my ruotes ony as needed I tack my 17 dauthger and two grand kids to school and walk behind holding them in my arms im very scard pleace find this mad person soon!!!!!!!” “i hope he dosent make his way tord pa.” (I’ll translate: I hope he doesn’t make his way toward PA.) “why don;t you kick everyone butt with a white van. i think maybe they would swicth there car by now.since everybody knows ti is a white van they probably went to earl shrives they paint any car for 99.95 i don't think they are that stupid” Here’s an exchange between two posters: “What if the snipper reads every thing we say and he gets ideas from what people say on the innernet? That is realy scarry.” Reply: “you know you may be right maybe he does have some kind of innernet and readying all of this that would be scareley your right” Posters critical of the investigation offered ideas. “I think the polices should put cameras everywhere, that’s the easiest way to findout who the killer is or they are. I think the killer have a car and if they put some cameras there whenever the case happened the car have to be somewhere so if they findout the car they’ll finout the killer, becuz everytimes he kills he’ll drive his car there.” This idea came in two parts because the poster felt the first message was unclear: (1) "i do have some info about him but ill only talk to like who ever is
looking for him like the fbi or the cops or who ever if they want my help and my
info then put your say in it” A reply to that message: “i am with you 100%. i think that this is rediculous. first we let terrorists in and they destroy us completely and now we have a man killing innocent people with a sniper and we have more comtrol over this situation then the terrorist one. i think he needs to go and someone who knows how to handle these things should step in. the sniper isnt working alone the people that saw him said that he wasnt alone and i think his one of the bin laden because he isnt going to make another terrisnt because everyone already knows about it and he isnt going to hijack a plane because theres more security and they might of plan another way of doing something to the americans they know that america is the best and what does he realy belive this snipper would call him for what a cup of coffee?” This person thought the police were doing a good job: “we dun kno much as the ppl n we all talk like we acually kno what is going on.. even the police n high inteligence can only be so sure... whoever writes things like they kno exactly what to do is wrong u dun kno wha is rele going on so stop talking like u do.give ur opinions dun state untru facts” Another wasn’t sure: “i wander. [wonder] fbi and police forces look slow in this case. offcourse thy got bulletproofs and we dont.” “Ok truely I think the sniper is not alone. He/She must have some one there working for or have some one working with them. I don't tHink that the sniper is right to do this for wut ever reason he/she is. I meAn come on if your tryin to tell some one something then just say it and don't kill ne one in the process. I also know that if this is the only wayhe/she knows to take care of some thing they wont stop until they get wut they want or some one kills them. I really don't think if we find the sniper we should kill him/her, us think bout it y kill them if we could make them live with wut they have done for the rest of there life. So we kill him/her wut does that make us feel? better cus we killed some one that killed 9 ,10 people ? or do we really have to say u did this so u will pay? i dont know but i think we all need to think bout life and all it really is worth!” “Most all truck drives are unsong hero’s.” “eveybody is innocesnt untill prove uquity. wait before make jutmen” To a poster’s question on whether or not there was enough evidence to
connect the snipers, came this reply: “Please, releaf yourself. A planty of
evidence is there and Is the message clear? If not, I repeat, log onto a message board. I’m truly sorry for those who are unable to read and write and yet want to convey an opinion. For some, English may be a second language, but their time would be better spent in a classroom than at a computer learning bad habits about the written word. I’m even sorrier for those who say that they’re educated but that in this format writing skills are unimportant. Their unintelligible messages cannot be distinguished from the thousands of others tossed into cyberspace. Sadly, some of these people announced that they are teachers. Children who are growing up using e-mail, message boards and chat rooms, where standards for language use have been lowered, are getting the message from these teachers that grammar, punctuation, capitalization and spelling are needed only on job applications or work related papers. Madonna is currently on the editorial board of Doorways magazine, is a past
contributing editor to Writer's Guidelines and News magazine, and was twice
nominated for the Pushcart Prize for fiction. |
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