Ur is an ancient city

I am in ranting ratbag mode today. I have been irked. I let it show.

Now I feel, well, a ratbag.

I do not consider myself at all reactionary as a rule. I am free and easy-going and despite being a Taurus, I tend not just to embrace change but to actively welcome it. I am no pedant when it comes to the English language – I accept that language evolves. I even start sentences with a conjunction when I feel that it fits the mood of my prose (- there’s daring for you!) I split infinitives and I am guilty of writing as though it were speech (you see, I feel that I am chatting with you.)

But, you may stutter, if all this be true, what can it be that has me all a-tizz?

Laziness and lack of concern for one’s reader.

The course team for The Mind is Flat have provided a hash tag for use in social media and are tweeting and responding to tweets. A small community is already building and contacts are being made. Everything is ticking over nicely and a sense of excitement is building. I am happy, finding like minds and new friends.

Along bounces some woman, urging participants to, well, participate (we already were , thank you) and demanding a re-tweet in order to secure a follow from her. Now, this kind of thing really annoys me. I mean, really annoys me. This behaviour is bound to get my goat.

• I will not be blackmailed into a follow by paying a ransom up front.
• The way to gain followers is to post interesting tweets, witty tweets, contentious tweets –  not ransom demands.
• Who cares anyway –  is it not rather sad to be seeking the affirmation of one’s peers by forcefully incrementing a follower count?
• I do not want to read her message, re-tweeted a thousand times, when it had nothing useful to say in the first place. I do not have the time.

If it were not bad enough already, she wrote her tweet using u and ur.

How very difficult is it to write a three letter word properly? FFS, this is an education environment. You have to be able to construct a sentence that does not require the reader to spend an age in attempting to parse it. If you are able to construct a proper sentence but choose not to do so out of sheer laziness, well, you are in my bozo bin. Not only are mental filters engaged, but the Twitter Block has been invoked. I do not have the time or the interest to do your work for you.

I did stop long enough to reply and say that I had no wish to follow somebody who could not correctly spell a simple three-letter word.

Yes, I know, 140 characters. Well, I too am bound by 140 characters when I tweet, but I have never descended, nor will I ever, to shortening “you” to “u”.

I’m an old fart. A reactionary old fart. I never thought that I would see the day. Put me to sleep now.

By the way – absence of capital letters, proper spacing, new paragraphs and punctuation – any or all of these habitually  missing from your email/posts/tweet/IMs  will get you into my bozo bin before you can say “Follow me!” I repeat: I do not have the time or the interest to do your work for you. I am too busy being a reactionary old fart. I thank you.