TECH: Posting on the Internet

The internet attracts more than its fair share of stupidity. I think its because every other medium has its own filters: it is difficult to either set up your own newspaper, radio station, or television station, or to convince someone to let you produce content for it. Part of the problem is the stupidity is very often mean. So I’m writing a list of things to avoid so that you do not contribute to the stupidity problem on the Internet¹. I don’t know how useful this is, because I doubt that trolls listen to articles such as this. I suppose if this maintains my readership base, and converts a few trolls and/or careless posters, then this is worth it.
Problem 1: Poor Spelling and Grammar
or por speeling and gramar

A somewhat annoying thing, it also is bad for the troll, as it destroys all credibility. I’m mostly talking about blatant repeat errors, because while a lack of capitalization is annoying, it’s fairly legible in short bursts. This is what I’m talking about,courtesy of elbini289:
“HHAAHAHAHAH
WUT KAN ii SAY..
DiS WUS ACTUALLY FUNNi”

While saying that a video is funny does not require credibility (people are going to accept that you find it funny regardless), it still makes the person look like he is drunk.

Problem 2: Finding racism/sexism where there is none

It seems as though everyone on the internet tries to find racism in user-submitted posts. While racism and sexism are very real, and shouldn’t be ignored, finding it in places where it is not is stupid.

Problem 3: Unnecessary derogatory remarks

or Ad Homeim Attacks

Ad homeium is where a person attacks the person s/he’s arguing with instead of the arguments. While you may wish to remark on someone’s character, you should also attack what they are saying, and/or make interesting comments about the thing as a whole.
Example: “Username, you’re really being rude. Now on Name of topic.”
If people avoided this problem, we would see YouTube comments with useful remarks, or at least generic positive ones².

It would be really nice to see more people having the “I disagree, but I respect” you mentality, rather than the “You’re stupid, and by the way you’re wrong.” mentality, perhaps better worded as “Ur stoopid, and ur wrong and a <insert bleep>³”

Problem 4: Being repetitive

This is occurs where you ask the same question, make the same joke, or post the same idiotic picture of a cat.† To avoid this, consider lurking to see what kind of things people usually ask, and definitely use the search function.

If you want to push yourself even farther away from internet troll/ idiotic commenter side of the spectrum, you can peruse this site[link]. It’s on logical fallacies, so if you’re read them, theoretically you should make fewer mistakes of this kind.

I’m sure you’ve read a reply that says “no, because if that was true statement everyone knows is false, would be true.” A real-life example would be if you equated something with the Nazis and to say that it’s bad to do so. That would be a logical error, because if you think about it, the Nazis breathed, held rallies, and spoke German. Clearly, none of those things is wrong. A further example of a fallacy would be to say that because those things the Nazis did were acceptable, everything they did is acceptable, which is also blatantly wrong.

Anyway, I digress. I hope this perhaps encouraged you to put more effort into posting your own comments. Remember, only you can prevent forest fires, pictures of kittens, and Internet stupidity.

¹ Doctors have AIDS, cancer, obesity, and many others. Ecologists have global warming, extinction, and overpopulation. Internet users, on the other hand, have stupidity, scams, and broken computers.

² Note that I consider positive comments better than negative ones, even if they are not though out much better. I.e.

“this is stupid” is worse than “this is good.” Of course, I would prefer to see intelligent, postive remarks as well as intelligent, negative remarks.

³ Currently bleeps on this blog are available in 3 flavors: ‘Classic’,'Dog-whistle’(“Annoy your neighbors!”), and

‘Klaxon’

† It’s not the cats/kittens I have a problem with, it’s is the idiotic captions. They are stupid and repetive for me. Please, please, please do not post, create, or download these images. I suppose I could make an exception for the clever ones, but I doubt many exist, so to be safe do not post them.