Syphilitic Halfwitted Ignorant Twat in West Covina, California writes:
Hello, assholes! I hate your fucking guts — the both of you — and I honestly wish you were both dead. Also, I’ve got a truly monumental inferiority complex for which I attempt to compensate by attempting to insult and belittle my intellectual, educational and societal betters! I was just wondering if by pointing out simple grammatical and typographical errors I was making those I detest (and again, I detest them because they are better than me in every possible way) look worse by comparison. What do you think? Kiss my ass!
Well, SHIT (I do hope I can call you SHIT), the answer is no. You see, when you attack the medium instead of the message, it merely shows that you’re incapable of engaging on any sort of meaningful intellectual level. While you (and McLuhan) may try to make the argument that the medium is the message, the reality is that the message is the message and sometimes — even frequently — the medium is imperfect.
Let’s use as an example a recent comment we received on this very blog from a person who signed themselves, “Kiss my ass” [sic]:
Typo… One line from the bottom of the main body. The correct spelling is “there”. You know, as in “Go over THERE you unbelievably stupid cum gargling gutter slut.”
Or, as a speaker of the English language might phrase it:
I have found a typographical error; one line from the bottom of the main body of text. The correct word is “there,” rather than “their.” E.g., “Get over there, you unbelievably stupid, cum gargling gutter-slut,” [emphasis added].
Rather than take issue with Sean’s message (to wit: High school prom night is nothing more than school-sanctioned foreplay ultimately and ideally leading to fornication), she (and I’m just assigning a gender at random) took issue with the single typographical error she saw and, in an attempt to make herself appear more intelligent than she actually is, called Sean out in an insulting and quite frankly ironically ungrammatical manner. While I realize that not everyone has had the opportunity, desire or means to attend a prom, I would think that anyone with even a modicum of knowledge on the subject might have more to offer with regard to disputing Sean’s message than an insulting and uninvited proofreading note. But, perhaps I’m being unfair. There may be any number of reasons that “Kiss my ass” [sic] is unfamiliar with the general politics and activities of high school.
All of this is not to say that if you take issue with something that either Sean or I say you shouldn’t communicate your displeasure or disagreement — far from it. We encourage that kind of interaction and enjoy the give and take we get from the literal dozen of you that follow the blog with any regularity. But if you want to attack an entry, do attack the content, not a simple typographical error.
But more to the point, I’m curious as to why you continue to read this blog if you detest both Sean and myself and the work we do to such an extreme degree. One wonders if you don’t have anything in your life to occupy your time? No hobbies? No books to read? No arts, no crafts, no educational furtherance to pursue? Oh well. It’s hard for me to complain, as a reader is most definitely a reader. And in the eventuality that this blog becomes supported by advertising, your continued readership will quite literally put money in our pockets. So by all means, keep reading, SHIT.
I’ll make an admission here, SHIT. If I’m to be completely honest, I’m guilty more frequently than I’d care to admit of being obsessed with that which I find distasteful. It’s an American trait, I think, to have enough time and energy to expend purely on something you hate, rather than taking that energy and putting it toward something productive or, at the very least, something you enjoy.
First-world problems! Right, SHIT?
