We are Anonymous. Resistance is Futile.

[Starlord]

I was always getting criticized for having a very good vocabulary, and even had my sergeant get on my case for using "five dollar words' in my reports. I told him I wasn't going to be dumbed down. Our secretary in our substation had a mental glitch that really torqued me. Every time in my reports I referred to the brakes on a vehicle, or how far from impact a vehicle began braking, she would 'correct it' to breaks or breaking. I finally had to tell her not to 'correct' the spelling in my reports. On the off chance that I made a mistake, I would accept the consequences, but I was not going to have another defense attorney hold me up to ridicule in front of a jury for referring to a car's breaks.

[Velfarre2001]

I was always getting criticized for having a very good vocabulary, and even had my sergeant get on my case for using "five dollar words' in my reports. I told him I wasn't going to be dumbed down. Our secretary in our substation had a mental glitch that really torqued me. Every time in my reports I referred to the brakes on a vehicle, or how far from impact a vehicle began braking, she would 'correct it' to breaks or breaking. I finally had to tell her not to 'correct' the spelling in my reports. On the off chance that I made a mistake, I would accept the consequences, but I was not going to have another defense attorney hold me up to ridicule in front of a jury for referring to a car's breaks.

I have the exact same problem. I have always loved reading, and have always had an extensive vocabulary. However, this seems to piss people off.
Have you ever tried speaking to someone online and they get pissy because you are forming whole sentences and using words with more then two sylables? I am VERY sorry not , but I REFUSE to go LOLWTFBBQKTHXSBYE.
They do not like it? They can osculate my buttocks.

[Lehk]

MOOT MAH BOIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

that was pretty random

[JustADude]

Have you ever tried speaking to someone online and they get pissy because you are forming whole sentences and using words with more then two sylables?

Yep! And they get double-pissed because I can type out an eloquently verbose insult worthy, occasionally, of Monkey Island in less time than it takes them to rip out some homophobic 12-year-old BS.

WSK: Wannabe-L33t Skr1p-K1dd13
Me: The ultra-elite, old-school JustADude

Me: <insert some sound strategic advice during a WoW Battlegrounds event>
WSK: UR A FAGGOT!1one!! LOLZ1!!!1!eleventyone!!11!!!
Me: And you, sir, are a moronic, pusillanimous bag of used snot-rags without a single scrap of redeeming value.

[Lehk]

Yep! And they get double-pissed because I can type out an eloquently verbose insult worthy of Monkey Island, if I might brag upon my own skill, in less time than it takes them to rip out some homophobic 12-year-old BS.

WSK: Wannabe-L33t Skr1p-K1dd13
Me: The ultra-elite, old-school JustADude

WSK: UR A FAGGOT!1one!! LOLZ1!!!1!eleventyone!!11!!!

Me: And you are a moronic, pusillanimous bag of used snot-rags without a single scrap of redeeming value.

but they have more punctuation and more caps so they win

as a side note, when i saw this thread i thought there was going to be some trouble.

[draggar]

My brother STILL makes fun of me for mispronouncing "sacred" and "macabre" when I was younger.

Hey, at least I used them in the correct context!

That's your brother, family members get a free pass but also allow you free passes.

[draggar]

Yep! And they get double-pissed because I can type out an eloquently verbose insult worthy, occasionally, of Monkey Island in less time than it takes them to rip out some homophobic 12-year-old BS.

WSK: Wannabe-L33t Skr1p-K1dd13
Me: The ultra-elite, old-school JustADude

Me: <insert some sound strategic advice during a WoW Battlegrounds event>
WSK: UR A FAGGOT!1one!! LOLZ1!!!1!eleventyone!!11!!!
Me: And you, sir, are a moronic, pusillanimous bag of used snot-rags without a single scrap of redeeming value.

I get the same on Everquest, thank god a lot of my guild members are not these "l33t h4x0rz" type (that's hacker-wannabee for "elite hacker", which, BTW, bragging about that on an electronic game is really NOT a good idea).

I"m a rogue on the game and a very good one (a real one, not one of these people who pump their character all the way up to the top level with no usefull skills). I group with people and there's always an ebayer (someone who bought an account) who knows jack about the game or how to play.

Them: "Dood, uz a theef. Don't bez stealin' my lewt"
Me: "What?"
Them: Uz a theef, don't bez stelin my lewt!!!!!!!!!!!1111"
Me: What are you saying that?
Them: The last (insert non-treasure dropping monster) didn't have no lewt, u stolz it all!!!!!!11111111"
Me: That's because that monster doesn't drop any treasure.
Them: Thatz stoooooooooooooooooooooooooop!!!!!111 Y wud they put it in?
Me: "Um, experience? Raise skills? Pace holder?"
Them: Dats stoooopid. Uz don't know how to play, NOOB NOOB NOOB NOOB.

(BTW - a pace holder, or PH, is a monster that ones killed, something else will appear in it's place when it reappears).

Again, thank god my guild is mature adults. Yes, we can still have fun and play pranks, but at least we can spell.

Of course, with all the text messaging craze going on, it's getting worse. OMG! LOL!

[draggar]

but they have more punctuation and more caps so they win

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111 U FORGOT CAPS LOCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!111111111


(plus the always predictable string of 1-5 1's at the end of a string of 20+ !'s).

[Dreamstalker]

Ummm...a former friend of mine (previously referred to as Psycho #2) was always asking me what words meant.

The Twit was like that. Always asking me what words longer than two syllables meant (and some shorter than that). Every so often if I happened to use a word she didn't know (most of the time I was not talking to her, or she was nosing through my comp sci texts), I'd get asked and then sniped at for "being too smart". She would demand that I dumb down explanations, and then yell at me when I did.

She had untreated ADHD and dyslexia, the latter which she tended to milk for sympathy from professors and the like; she was capable of doing the work, just didn't want to do anything "hard". The kid had no books whatsoever in her room aside from the expected textbooks (still a mystery to me).

[Becks]

Ummm...a former friend of mine (previously referred to as Psycho #2) was always asking me what words meant. I had sort of a complex dating back to grade school regarding people who ridiculed me for using big words and "acting like I was smarter than everyone."

As we're proving, not EVERYONE in America has been educated to a sixth grade level, which proves my original question.

Noelegy, I had the same problem! I think that's why my best friend is who she is, and she reads a lot, too. In fact, she's the only person I know that reads faster than I do! For some reason, it still seems to be a "crime" that we're female, we're smart, and we don't apologize for it.

I think they gave up trying to rate me when I was reading at a high school level before I left elementary school, for what it's worth.

When I'm not working, or on here, I'm always reading a book or the paper. Hell, at work, I read the NY Daily News AND the NY Post. (I get the craptacular Star Ledger delivered to my house.)

Especially since I have just gotten myself enamored with Philippa Gregory's historical fiction about various women in the life of Henry VIII.

IMO, Philippa Gregory should just be listed as fiction. Her historical "facts" are so bad, it's excruciating. If she tried hard enough, she could've found more than enough information on Mary Bolyen, in particular, to know that she had her whole story WRONG WRONG WRONG. (/end rant)

[Andara Bledin]

The populace has PLENTY of resources available to educate themselves, especially in this day and age. That's hardly the result of "the man" keeping them down, it's more of a result of people just being frickin' lazy.

laissez faire attitudes are ok about some things, but not knowing a pretty common word that's probably on quite a few 3rd graders' vocab lists? Shameful.

Quoted for truth. Anyone who wants to be "not stupid" can be, at the least, book smart.

I had sort of a complex dating back to grade school regarding people who ridiculed me for using big words and "acting like I was smarter than everyone." Upon graduating high school, I told myself that I would never dumb myself down for anyone again; if they didn't understand my vocabulary, the failing was theirs and not mine.

I still get crap from people about my vocabulary. At least now it's mostly just a guy at work joking more that he's dumb (usually comments about me using "big words" around him).

Have you ever heard the term "reader's vocabulary". It's applied to someone who uses unusual words with more than the usual number of sylables and butchers the pronounciation.

I was one of those. I rarely run into words I can't pronounce any more, however. Although, I was about 14 before I realized (on my own, thankfully) that Yosemite and Yo-se-mite were the same place. :embarrassed:

Yep, that's me. I've gotten a lot better at not butchering words as I've gotten older, but from 5 to about 16 years of age, I was using words that I'd only read, as no one I talked to was anything close to my reading level, so I'd no one to compare pronunciation with.

I always had my mom or aunt to go to, or the dictionary. We're all voracious readers, so I had someone nearby to ask about words I'd never seen when I didn't want to dig up my dictionary. Or for the odd case where the word wouldn't even be in my dictionary, which was a Webster, so it shouldn't have been missing so much, even if the words were archaic.

"My phones not be workin'" (mind you, they have one phone)

The public education system here sucks, but with the US being the torch-bearer for the internet, everyone here should have easy access to better educate themselves, even if it is just from a public library.

As for that first bit, it's not plural. It's either a contraction (my phone is not be working) or a possessive (my phone, which belongs to me, not be working).

As for the second, it's not that the system sucks (it doesn't, really, it's adequate) but that the people in it and often also those running it, just don't give a rat's ass about anything besides doing time and collecting their diploma/ged/paycheck/gov't funding. And the ones that care aren't a high enough percentage and don't have enough power to make it so that the others have to step up rather than dragging everyone else down.

Again, thank god my guild is mature adults. Yes, we can still have fun and play pranks, but at least we can spell.

Heh. In my last WoW guild, we had a ban against the use of 1337-5P3/\|< (aka leet speak). And it was frowned upon if you used a lot of shortcuts like u instead of you, or 2 instead of too or to, or any1 instead of anyone. Although stuff like wtg for way to go was ok.

^-.-^

[Rapscallion]

I'm rather amused and pleased to note that people who shorten words to single letters here don't do it for long, or don't last.

Rapscallion

[XCashier]

Have you ever heard the term "reader's vocabulary". It's applied to someone who uses unusual words with more than the usual number of sylables and butchers the pronounciation.

I've done that frequently. My most memorable one was in Theatre class, when I was saying a line that included the word "chiropodist". I pronounced it "Cairo PO dist" (I thought it was similar to "chiropractor"). The teacher corrected it as "sheer ROP o dist". Why the playwright didn't use "podiatrist" instead, I have no idea.

Back OT, I have a pretty decent vocabulary. I used to read the dictionary as a child. I knew how to use a lot of polysyllabic words, even if I didn't know how to say them!

[Gawdzillers]

This thread reminds me of a joke I heard on Live At Gotham (I forget the guy's name, he's the one that looked like a twelve-year-old):

My teacher asked me to provide an example of a rhetorical question. So I said, "Why don't you go fuck yourself?" He said, "Get out of my classroom, you little punk." I said, "You're not supposed to answer a rhetorical question."

[Mongo Skruddgemire]

I'd have made sure that the Story of O was on the top of the pile.

M