Why it's okay to bash leet-speakers
This was a nicely-articulated argument I recently read on why it's okay to bash people who write in 1337. The poster who wrote most of this uses the handle of Snipafist, and posts on warhammer.org.uk
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Paul Gates wrote:
So not meeting up to arbitrary standards of intelligence and knowledge about a game of miniature model men deserves disrespect? It was funny but I get the feeling that some of you actually have a strange hatred for these people.
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Oh, I don't hate them. They're all human and most of their defects can simply be solved (like most human problems) through education. But I see nothing wrong with laughing at how silly they are. Nor do I see some great moral calamity arising from not granting respect to someone who can barely type or formulate a coherent argument. If someone tried to converse with you in real life using similar grammar and construction, you'd write them off without even questioning it. But on the internet, somehow the rules are changed. As for foreign speakers of English, they're often quite easy to distinguish (different underlying foundations of sentence construction, etc.). We as a society give them special room for making mistakes and whatnot, and we genuinely appreciate their attempt to communicate with us. This post is not about those people.
And the miniatures game example is a red herring. Anything worth communicating is worth communicating clearly, regardless of what the subject matter is. I don't care if the group is devoted to rocket science or chicken farts - if there are people looking to exchange ideas then everyone has a right to expect relatively clearly written and argued concepts. Even material with a comic nature needs to be clearly expressed (especially comic material, I'd argue), so this doesn't just apply to some kind of magical mechanical world where we all talk about Kant's Categorical Imperiative day long like good logical wonderchildren.
So it's not so much the n3tk1dz that earn my ire. They're sad little things but they have hope. What constantly annoys me are the people who make it their pet project to stand up for such people and defend their "rights". Standing up for lax standards of communication is about the dumbest thing you can do. If there is one thing every human society attempts to constantly police and purify, it's expression. Expression is the cornerstone of civilization in general. Going out of your way to be offended for people who are chipping away at the common medium we all socially construct as a means of communicating ideas to others seems foolish at best and downright delusional at worst. In our coddled age, making fun of people is seen as some kind of great evil. The morality of it isn't so clearly defined however, and greatly rests on the impetus for such treatment. Mocking is a tried and true social mechanism for lightly shaming others into following conventional social rules and mores while defining for everyone else what is and is not acceptable for the maintenance of group cohesion. And in this case, we're defining ourselves as a majority group that respects logical and clear expression by mocking those who break our agreed-upon social rules. Humans have done this for millenia, and will likely continue for many more. Some misguided "sugarplums and gumdrops for everyone" faux-moral outrage isn't going to change that.
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Paul Gates wrote:
So not meeting up to arbitrary standards of intelligence and knowledge about a game of miniature model men deserves disrespect? It was funny but I get the feeling that some of you actually have a strange hatred for these people.
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Oh, I don't hate them. They're all human and most of their defects can simply be solved (like most human problems) through education. But I see nothing wrong with laughing at how silly they are. Nor do I see some great moral calamity arising from not granting respect to someone who can barely type or formulate a coherent argument. If someone tried to converse with you in real life using similar grammar and construction, you'd write them off without even questioning it. But on the internet, somehow the rules are changed. As for foreign speakers of English, they're often quite easy to distinguish (different underlying foundations of sentence construction, etc.). We as a society give them special room for making mistakes and whatnot, and we genuinely appreciate their attempt to communicate with us. This post is not about those people.
And the miniatures game example is a red herring. Anything worth communicating is worth communicating clearly, regardless of what the subject matter is. I don't care if the group is devoted to rocket science or chicken farts - if there are people looking to exchange ideas then everyone has a right to expect relatively clearly written and argued concepts. Even material with a comic nature needs to be clearly expressed (especially comic material, I'd argue), so this doesn't just apply to some kind of magical mechanical world where we all talk about Kant's Categorical Imperiative day long like good logical wonderchildren.
So it's not so much the n3tk1dz that earn my ire. They're sad little things but they have hope. What constantly annoys me are the people who make it their pet project to stand up for such people and defend their "rights". Standing up for lax standards of communication is about the dumbest thing you can do. If there is one thing every human society attempts to constantly police and purify, it's expression. Expression is the cornerstone of civilization in general. Going out of your way to be offended for people who are chipping away at the common medium we all socially construct as a means of communicating ideas to others seems foolish at best and downright delusional at worst. In our coddled age, making fun of people is seen as some kind of great evil. The morality of it isn't so clearly defined however, and greatly rests on the impetus for such treatment. Mocking is a tried and true social mechanism for lightly shaming others into following conventional social rules and mores while defining for everyone else what is and is not acceptable for the maintenance of group cohesion. And in this case, we're defining ourselves as a majority group that respects logical and clear expression by mocking those who break our agreed-upon social rules. Humans have done this for millenia, and will likely continue for many more. Some misguided "sugarplums and gumdrops for everyone" faux-moral outrage isn't going to change that.