International Mac Podcast

This week I’m going back to something that, while not very geeky itself, is something that I, and many other geeks, have to deal with on the internet: People who sound stupid *Intense orchestra hit*. Okay, so it’s not a very big deal, who really cares, I mean, It’s their loss, not mine, so I’m disguising this whole angry rant as some ‘helpful tips’, let’s call it, “How to not be a dummy for dummies”.

Chapter #1: Use that big piece of jelly in your scull

Normally, your brain has a little voice in it that says “hey, maybe it’s not such a good idea to say that out loud” when you’re about to say something stupid, say, you’re about to insult Dvorak (The only person ever to have survived that is Calacanis). Somehow though, for some people, that little voice turns a blind eye (or, whatever the metaphorical mental voice equivalent of an eye is) to the internet. Want proof? Ever been to digg.com? I rest my case. Whenever a story that has anything to do with Apple comes up (be it ‘All macs will soon explode’ or ‘Apple saves child from burning building, gives him iPod’ ) you will not have to scroll far to find a commenter calling apple and it’s users ‘retards’ and macs ‘gay’ (Which, technically speaking, is impossible, seeing as computers do not have sexual urges, be they heterosexual or homosexual). Oh, thank you, brilliant commenter, you have enlightened the conversation with your knowledge, and contributed to my understanding of the story with your well thought out remarks (I shouldn’t need to tell this, but that whole sentence was sarcastic). It’s fine if your opinion is that Apple sucks, but at least try to relate it to the story and phrase it intelligently, say “My Windows computer went over 5 years without exploding” or “Sure, Apple saved the kid, but they were unable to save the dog, which is discriminating against the canine race”.

Chapter #2: Take time to type (Remember it as the 4 T’s)

How much time does is really save you to leave out vowels, capitol letters, and punctuation? I mean really, I’m surprised some of these people even bother putting spaces in anymore. Soon you’ll have to have an almanac or a dictionary or something just to figure out what your friend texted to you. “OMG, i jst got bak frm skool we had chikn 4 lnch it wuz gud bt i gt a stmach ake an i had 2 go 2 te nrse!” If you could read that, well, good for you, if you could read that at the same speed as you could have read it had the author bothered to use actual grammar and spelling, then you have some sort of strange super-power. “i thnk the qantum state uv n elctron is actully a wave uv nrgy itz jst te intrference wth lite wavs that cause thm to appear like a prticle whn obsrved.” I admit I just pulled that out of nowhere, so that may or may not be actually intelligent, but just imagine that was a breakthrough scientific theory. Would you really take it seriously if the author wrote it like that? I wouldn’t. Have you ever noticed on forums that the really dumb looking threads always come from people who talk like that? They may have had perfectly valid questions. Have you noticed how people on twitter who write things out have more followers (on average) than those who don’t? Seriously, it can’t save you that much time to type things out in full, I’ve just written 576 words in about half an hour. If typing is that hard for you, get some typing software, practice writing things out fully, it’s not that hard, but it’ll do a lot for you.

Chapter #3: Be interesting

Today after class I was talking to my english teacher about twitter, he had brought it up in class and I just wanted to see what he thought about it. He said, and I quote, “Do I really need to know when Barack Obama is eating cereal?”. The answer is, of course, No. This has been the criticism twitter keeps recieving from non-users who are baffled by it’s popularity. Sure, twitter asks “what are you doing”, but one would hope your life is interesting enough that what you’re doing is not always “eating cereal”. Here’s the third and final trick to sounding smart: be worth paying attention to. Be social, interact with other people, have conversations. Talk about what you like to do. Link to websites or videos or pictures you found interesting, or, in the case of comments, are relevant to the topic you’re commenting on. Really, when it comes down to it, be entertaining, because otherwise nobody will want to read what you’re saying.

I think that pretty much sums it up. Just a quick disclaimer, no, that was not aimed at anybody in particular, and probably not many people who read this blog (unless it gets dugg or something *ahem*).