On Old Hats, Old Farts, Having Froggies and Twelveness
On THE_Other_Forum, a discussion about twelveness began when
madamehecubus posted a witty list of "Ways Not To be Twelve" in the new Sharkbait subforum.
Credit also belongs to bigtruckgirl and Gwendolyne.
YARRR!!
Courtesy of the pirates and buccaneers...those wacky women who make the booty possible:
10, If you think that the booty magically updates itself, or that we care that TSR updated three seconds ago and you absolutely must have that item right this minute or you will die, we know you are 12.
9. If you ask a question that's been answered in the post right in front of you, we know you are 12.
8. If you think we give a rat’s ass that you were banned from another free site, we know you are 12.
7. If you resurrect a thread more than a month old only to say "I agree" or "thanksthisisgreat", we know you are 12.
6. If you get all beligerent, indignant, or pissy about your thread having been moved here to Sharkbait, we know you are 12.
5. If you think the world revolves around you and your issues, we know you are 12 (or a very spoiled adult).
4. If you write in "chateze" without a sufficient wink-and-a-nod and don't know how to spell "you", "before" or "are" correctly, we know you are 12.
3. If you just HAVE to complain about a free site (unless you have some NEW juicy gossip), we know you are 12.
2. If you whine, we know you are 12.
And the number one sign:
1. If you ask to see Gwendolyne's penis, we know you are 12.
This led many posters to wonder "Why 12?" and to ask if they were "being 12" and "what's all the hate over 12ness?"
After explaining Pescado the Fat Obstreperous Jerk's Rules Of Six (There is no 7, only 6. There is no 15, only 12. There is no 21, only 18. Are you 39 "in real life"? Well, no, actually, you are 36. Enjoy it.), people wondered aloud why 12ness was so disapproved of in the Sims 2 community (at least on the fora I personally frequent; the BBS makes me lose IQ points and I get cranky when deluged with glomps, snuffles, fuzzywiggles and sparkleez at length).
iloveparrots said,
i strongly doubt that anybody here seriously HATES 12 year olds.
but unless they are relatives, or 12 years old themselves, no-one else is terribly interested in the drama that quite naturally forms a large part of the 12 year old's life.
my take on it is that kids should go play with their own friends and not try to tell the grownups what to do. yawn. i have heard that there are some cool websites out there for kids to play on. in safety. with no personal info disclosed.
And I agreed. The reason 12ness is annoying is that most of us haven't been 12 for a long time. Heck, when I was 12, I had nothing in common with other 12 year olds and found them annoying and silly. Of course, my father had just died, which forced me to forgo a lot of the emotional indulgences and immaturity most 12s can enjoy, and which is age-appropriate when you are 12, but I was always a little bit of an adult stuffed into a kid suit even before that.
In addition to that, the Sims games are rated T for Teen. 12 year olds are not teenagers. This is not to say that they should not play the games, but the community is not, by default, set up to deal with 12-ness.
The I CAN HAZ A FROGGIE!?! behaviors of 12 year olds are very tiring to those of us who have been online long enough to remember when it actually took a little technical know-how and smarts to get online, when the "world wide web" was a series of text-only links, and newsgroups were mostly self-moderating and occupied by professionals, educators, researchers, technoshamen, and geeks, most of which were far older than 12, even if I wasn't much older than 12 myself at the time (first major job right out of college).
Oh, my hat is old. *rueful grin goes here*
Sometimes I miss those days, those pre-paynet days before AOLMeToo and Compu$uck arrived. Where KIBO grepped, B1FF claimed to be 1337, lemurs frinked and stole grape Nehi, Matt Drudge had not egowanked every known newsgroup in existence in his relentless urge for self-grandiosity, marketing spam was practically non-existent.
I remember editing with vi for fun and profit, UNIX, MUSHes, MOOs and MUCKs, some people still had !s in their email addresses, people fingered Coke machines, snopes was still being birthed from the loins of alt.folklore.urban, fnord, RFCs were read, Brad (Templeton?) accidentally spammed the op channels (and thus popularized the term), Elf was squicking people in the *.sex groups (and we did not want to know what some people thought the definition of squicking really was), I was a beta reader for O'Reilly, Eris had a lively following (hail!), alt.callahans was full of shared stories, alt.best.of.internet really was, mailservs and listservs full of smart people who could read, think, write and spell, ASCII art was a developing (lame) art form, and people actually knew what a FAQ was for and usually read it.
Hell, I still use PINE as my primary mail tool. Try to virus me up there, you bastards.
Of course, now we have Cat Macros, Homestar Runner, Weebl and Bob, and Amazon.com. That's almost worth it.
Now that I have dusted off my Old Hat and waved my ePeen about in a fit of nostalgia, I'm going to go have some rum and feel crotchety. YARRR!!!!
Some days I feel like no one else was around during the early days. (I didn't even go into the BBS and cassette drive phase, or the brief flirtation with an AMIGA, or PONG. Also, I still have a typewriter.)
Is it just me?
I guess I have more in common with 40-something, and 50-something-year-old geek males than my own age group sometimes. (Or, excuse me, 42-something and 54-something-year-olds.)
The I CAN HAZ FROGGIE bit is a self-referential nod to a post I jotted off in a fit of pique months ago in response to a n00b on THE_Forum who asked a question and called the forum denizens stupid all in one breath. Way to go, n00b, piss off the people you want to help you.
Zirconia Wolf, your entrance into the forum is exactly like this:
Adults are all gathered together, drinking cocktails, discussing politics / literature / economics / the arts.
Enter, stage right, Zirconia Wolf, age three, bearing stinky, mud-covered THING.
ZW, barging into room, shouting at top of lungs: HAY U GUYZ, I CAN HAZ A FROGGIE!!
Adults: *blink blink*
Crickets: *chirp*
ZW: WRYYYYYYY IZ NO ONE ADMIRIN MAH FROGGIE!?! ADMIRE IT NAO!!!! IZ A FRAWG!!!!
Adults: *long-suffering sighs, eyerolls, raised eyebrows*
Crickets: *chirpity chirp chirp chirp!!*
ZW: Y'ALL IS SO REWD, NOT APPRECIATIN MAH UNIQUE AN BOOTIFUL SNOFAYK-NESS!! AN MAH FRAWG!!! Y'ALL ARE TEH SUXX0RZ!!!
Adults: Who let the barbarian crash the gate?
Adults: Our bouncer is SO fired.
Adults: What on earth is that annoying person going on about? It sounds tiresome.
Adults: Time to go nudge the bouncers. Oh, Venusy? Hello, paging Venusy! Please report to the ballroom, STAT, and bring your hobnailed boots and sharpest poking sticks.
Pes: That person is 12. *smite, burninate*
Venusy: *pokes with sticks*
Adults: Huzzah!
Adults: Yey!
Adults: *back to intelligent discussions*
Some Adults: *back to discussions in another part of the room, sprinkled with liberal helpings of emoties and glomps*
ZW, banished to Siberia: ...YOU'LL ALL BE SORRY ONE DAY!! THESE GRAPES ARE SOUR! I AM LEAVING!!
Adults: Did you hear something?
So now you know.
Of course, the thread then devolved into a virtual cocktail party. (I chose a virtual chocolate martini.)
The irony is that Venusy is, actually, in real life, 12, at least as is defined by the FOJ, Pescado. But he is able to convincingly impersonate 18-ness, and that, dear readers, is really all we ask of anyone.
Of course, every forum, chat room, website and blog has its own little microcosm of dramarama. Oh, Internetz, you make us stupid. (As SomethingAwful would say.) You know you're not twelve anymore when half your time online is accompanied by increasing bouts of deja poo and bursts of snarkiness.
Deja poo being, of course, the feeling that you've seen all this shit before.
madamehecubus posted a witty list of "Ways Not To be Twelve" in the new Sharkbait subforum.
Credit also belongs to bigtruckgirl and Gwendolyne.
YARRR!!
Courtesy of the pirates and buccaneers...those wacky women who make the booty possible:
10, If you think that the booty magically updates itself, or that we care that TSR updated three seconds ago and you absolutely must have that item right this minute or you will die, we know you are 12.
9. If you ask a question that's been answered in the post right in front of you, we know you are 12.
8. If you think we give a rat’s ass that you were banned from another free site, we know you are 12.
7. If you resurrect a thread more than a month old only to say "I agree" or "thanksthisisgreat", we know you are 12.
6. If you get all beligerent, indignant, or pissy about your thread having been moved here to Sharkbait, we know you are 12.
5. If you think the world revolves around you and your issues, we know you are 12 (or a very spoiled adult).
4. If you write in "chateze" without a sufficient wink-and-a-nod and don't know how to spell "you", "before" or "are" correctly, we know you are 12.
3. If you just HAVE to complain about a free site (unless you have some NEW juicy gossip), we know you are 12.
2. If you whine, we know you are 12.
And the number one sign:
1. If you ask to see Gwendolyne's penis, we know you are 12.
This led many posters to wonder "Why 12?" and to ask if they were "being 12" and "what's all the hate over 12ness?"
After explaining Pescado the Fat Obstreperous Jerk's Rules Of Six (There is no 7, only 6. There is no 15, only 12. There is no 21, only 18. Are you 39 "in real life"? Well, no, actually, you are 36. Enjoy it.), people wondered aloud why 12ness was so disapproved of in the Sims 2 community (at least on the fora I personally frequent; the BBS makes me lose IQ points and I get cranky when deluged with glomps, snuffles, fuzzywiggles and sparkleez at length).
iloveparrots said,
i strongly doubt that anybody here seriously HATES 12 year olds.
but unless they are relatives, or 12 years old themselves, no-one else is terribly interested in the drama that quite naturally forms a large part of the 12 year old's life.
my take on it is that kids should go play with their own friends and not try to tell the grownups what to do. yawn. i have heard that there are some cool websites out there for kids to play on. in safety. with no personal info disclosed.
And I agreed. The reason 12ness is annoying is that most of us haven't been 12 for a long time. Heck, when I was 12, I had nothing in common with other 12 year olds and found them annoying and silly. Of course, my father had just died, which forced me to forgo a lot of the emotional indulgences and immaturity most 12s can enjoy, and which is age-appropriate when you are 12, but I was always a little bit of an adult stuffed into a kid suit even before that.
In addition to that, the Sims games are rated T for Teen. 12 year olds are not teenagers. This is not to say that they should not play the games, but the community is not, by default, set up to deal with 12-ness.
The I CAN HAZ A FROGGIE!?! behaviors of 12 year olds are very tiring to those of us who have been online long enough to remember when it actually took a little technical know-how and smarts to get online, when the "world wide web" was a series of text-only links, and newsgroups were mostly self-moderating and occupied by professionals, educators, researchers, technoshamen, and geeks, most of which were far older than 12, even if I wasn't much older than 12 myself at the time (first major job right out of college).
Oh, my hat is old. *rueful grin goes here*
Sometimes I miss those days, those pre-paynet days before AOLMeToo and Compu$uck arrived. Where KIBO grepped, B1FF claimed to be 1337, lemurs frinked and stole grape Nehi, Matt Drudge had not egowanked every known newsgroup in existence in his relentless urge for self-grandiosity, marketing spam was practically non-existent.
I remember editing with vi for fun and profit, UNIX, MUSHes, MOOs and MUCKs, some people still had !s in their email addresses, people fingered Coke machines, snopes was still being birthed from the loins of alt.folklore.urban, fnord, RFCs were read, Brad (Templeton?) accidentally spammed the op channels (and thus popularized the term), Elf was squicking people in the *.sex groups (and we did not want to know what some people thought the definition of squicking really was), I was a beta reader for O'Reilly, Eris had a lively following (hail!), alt.callahans was full of shared stories, alt.best.of.internet really was, mailservs and listservs full of smart people who could read, think, write and spell, ASCII art was a developing (lame) art form, and people actually knew what a FAQ was for and usually read it.
Hell, I still use PINE as my primary mail tool. Try to virus me up there, you bastards.
Of course, now we have Cat Macros, Homestar Runner, Weebl and Bob, and Amazon.com. That's almost worth it.
Now that I have dusted off my Old Hat and waved my ePeen about in a fit of nostalgia, I'm going to go have some rum and feel crotchety. YARRR!!!!
Some days I feel like no one else was around during the early days. (I didn't even go into the BBS and cassette drive phase, or the brief flirtation with an AMIGA, or PONG. Also, I still have a typewriter.)
Is it just me?
I guess I have more in common with 40-something, and 50-something-year-old geek males than my own age group sometimes. (Or, excuse me, 42-something and 54-something-year-olds.)
The I CAN HAZ FROGGIE bit is a self-referential nod to a post I jotted off in a fit of pique months ago in response to a n00b on THE_Forum who asked a question and called the forum denizens stupid all in one breath. Way to go, n00b, piss off the people you want to help you.
Zirconia Wolf, your entrance into the forum is exactly like this:
Adults are all gathered together, drinking cocktails, discussing politics / literature / economics / the arts.
Enter, stage right, Zirconia Wolf, age three, bearing stinky, mud-covered THING.
ZW, barging into room, shouting at top of lungs: HAY U GUYZ, I CAN HAZ A FROGGIE!!
Adults: *blink blink*
Crickets: *chirp*
ZW: WRYYYYYYY IZ NO ONE ADMIRIN MAH FROGGIE!?! ADMIRE IT NAO!!!! IZ A FRAWG!!!!
Adults: *long-suffering sighs, eyerolls, raised eyebrows*
Crickets: *chirpity chirp chirp chirp!!*
ZW: Y'ALL IS SO REWD, NOT APPRECIATIN MAH UNIQUE AN BOOTIFUL SNOFAYK-NESS!! AN MAH FRAWG!!! Y'ALL ARE TEH SUXX0RZ!!!
Adults: Who let the barbarian crash the gate?
Adults: Our bouncer is SO fired.
Adults: What on earth is that annoying person going on about? It sounds tiresome.
Adults: Time to go nudge the bouncers. Oh, Venusy? Hello, paging Venusy! Please report to the ballroom, STAT, and bring your hobnailed boots and sharpest poking sticks.
Pes: That person is 12. *smite, burninate*
Venusy: *pokes with sticks*
Adults: Huzzah!
Adults: Yey!
Adults: *back to intelligent discussions*
Some Adults: *back to discussions in another part of the room, sprinkled with liberal helpings of emoties and glomps*
ZW, banished to Siberia: ...YOU'LL ALL BE SORRY ONE DAY!! THESE GRAPES ARE SOUR! I AM LEAVING!!
Adults: Did you hear something?
So now you know.
Of course, the thread then devolved into a virtual cocktail party. (I chose a virtual chocolate martini.)
The irony is that Venusy is, actually, in real life, 12, at least as is defined by the FOJ, Pescado. But he is able to convincingly impersonate 18-ness, and that, dear readers, is really all we ask of anyone.
Of course, every forum, chat room, website and blog has its own little microcosm of dramarama. Oh, Internetz, you make us stupid. (As SomethingAwful would say.) You know you're not twelve anymore when half your time online is accompanied by increasing bouts of deja poo and bursts of snarkiness.
Deja poo being, of course, the feeling that you've seen all this shit before.