Between dealing with mind-melting programming problems at work, I spend a lot of time reading various forums and blogs around the internet (notably Football Outsiders, the KOL Forums, rec.sports.disc, fark, and a bunch of others). While normally it's all fun and games, there are a number of things that really piss me off. These include:
1.) When people get all excited to be the first post on a various topic. Great, Congrat-u-fuckalations you managed to be reading this particular site as something was being posted. I'm really pleased that you took this opportunity, not to write anything that contributes to the discussion of the topic at hand, but rather to say: "FIRST POST! YAY!" Nice Job. You win. Go shoot yourself in the face.
2.) People who seem to exist only to correct others grammar. I grant that it's really annoying when someone posts "dood teh RAIDERs R teh bestest teem in footabll!!!!!!!!" and they deserved to be smacked down for their linguistic incompetence. However, a discussion of the merits of the Raiders off-season pick-ups on a football website is not in fact a scholarly paper and therefore it's OK if someone splits an infinitive or uses commas incorrectly. You'll get over it, trust me. The best part about the grammar Nazism on many forums is that at least 50% of grammar Nazi posts contain grammatical errors. The lesson? Grammar is lame.
3.) Smacking down nOObs. Yeah I get it, you have seventeen million posts and have been a member of this board for 37 years. That's cool, however, this does not give you an excuse to be a dick. Not eveyone is as enlightened as you and some have *gasp* discovered this website/game/whatever later than you. Also, believe it or not not everyone reads the forum guidelines, or performs searches to see if a topic has been covered before, gently guide them to the revelant locations. Don't say "Jesus Christ read the damn policies you stupid nOOb. Plus someone already has a thread about this, maybe if you weren't a moron you could find it" it's impolite. Unsurprisingly, these people tend to also be grammar Nazis.
All right, I don't want to bitch too much because that is, in and of itself, lame. So I'll stop. word.
