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Constantly Amazed by the Online Experts
You probably think this will be about people trying to spout training techniques over discussion boards and blogs, but it’s much simpler.
I am constantly amazed, just absolutely astounded, at the number of people who are rock-solid certain they can divine a person’s meaning, intent, and tone based on a few words on a blog post or discussion board.
True: a talented writer can convey meaning, intent, and tone. A talented reader can divine something of the writer’s meaning, intent, and tone. Probably. Depending on what literary theory you subscribe to, anyway.
Also true: the vast majority of bulletin board posters are not talented writers. Even when people are writing informally, you can generally tell who has a good grasp of language and who does not. And, frankly, if someone does not have a good enough grasp of language to write intelligently enough to get their point across, I have a hard time believing their “analysis” of what other people said (or, even better, meant to say).
Which is why I love, absolutely love, the discussions that devolve into arguments like this:
Person 1: I like X.
Person 2: I don’t.
Person 1: Why do you have to be so nasty about it?
Person 2: How is saying I disagree with you nasty?
Person 1: Here, I’ll quote you: ‘I don’t.’ If you can’t see that you’re being nasty, I can’t help you.
Person 2: It’s a free world. I’m allowed to state I don’t agree with you.
Person 1: I wish you would just go away. What are you, a troll? (joke!) [laughing icon]
Person 2: Wait, so I can’t disagree with you, but you can call me a troll?
Person 1: It was a joke! Look, I put a laughing icon up! God, you’re so dense!
Person 2: No, I’m trying trying to understand why you can make jokes at my expense but I’m not allowed to disagree with you.
Person 1: There you go being nasty again. Why can’t you be civilized?
And on and on. Of course, it goes the other way, too, with people who claim “free speech” and “just telling it like it is” as a cover for being unnecessarily rude (all under cover of being “witty” of course).
The amazing thing here is how everyone is an expert at determining what other people meant, even if they can barely write a coherent statement (and if you misinterpret their self-proclaimed meaning, then you are the idiot, of course, because it’s clearly stated in their post. They can’t help if it you don’t know what “grzzzfartzik horse pffilsblu ride hoggrottdisk stirrups” means.).
Have you ever watched a group of English majors arguing over the meaning/tone/intent of a text? You should, sometime. It’s great. It’s like the most heated of the discussions on horse boards, but with even bigger egos. Really. If you want to see some serious online catfights, go read a writing board. It’s not just the topic at hand that gets debated, it’s peoples’ ability to interpret what’s going on. And since their career path is dependent on their ability to interpret, well, you can imagine how personally they take it. (They, we, whatever. I like a good literary discussion as much as the next person, and I have no small ego with regard to my abilities.)
Thinking about this makes me itch to go write a thesis on interpreting online discussions. I suspect my background in psychology is not quite strong enough for this, but it could be amusing to interpret exchanges using multiple literary theories. Hmm. Yeah, in all my spare time.
At any rate, I doubt this is all going to change soon, which means I can continue to be amused by these arguments. And attitudes. And the complete disconnect between apparent writing and analysis ability and apparent belief in one’s writing and analysis ability.
Now to post this and then discover the thousand and one mistakes in it, because if Murphey’s Law #637 is that you will always type your password incorrectly when someone is watching, Murphey’s Law #638 is that the person who sets themselves up on a high horse over any sort of writing skills invariably makes the stupidest mistakes of all.
Comments
Yes, it’s definitely hard, sometimes, to get your meaning across in the way that you intend to. Even people who are normally articulate in person don’t always write as well. You should be happy that everyone in the world isn’t a talented writer - you’d be out of a job. http://halt-near-x.com/images/smileys/smile.gif I’m not sure what a “talented reader” is.
Talented readers—people who are really good at picking up nuances in texts and ferreting out the meaning.
There are people, of course, who read and interpret better than they write, or who can articulate better than they can write, but I’ve known very few people who were really talented at interpretation and just abysmal at writing (or vice versa).
I don’t think most of the discussion board threads that devolve into catfights are really about communicating anyway—it’s people trying to see who can rattle the most words around without any real regard for what is being said or how. Which is why it’s amusing.
Real discussions, those are a totally different (and respectable) beast.
ROFLMAO So true, so true. When I’m in good humor, I can enjoy a good trainwreck…and when I’m in bad humor, I stay away from online forums!
On May 27, 2008, risingrainbow said:
Amen, Sister!