Geeks:

I'm witchu Charlie. This is just a TV show. People need to calm down.

If we calm down our passion for film on a film related message board, what do we have left? Empty conversations about the 10th season of Friends?

Wait, wait Charles is the one taking it too seriously? Have you read Slater's posts? Granted he's rarely a bastion of reason, but still...

Coming from Jabba, King of Irrelevant Incomprehensible Threads, that's a banquet of irony right there.

Such is the nature of expressing disappointment on a message board. Does Slater really wish someone would die over Angel being cancelled? I doubt it. Boards allow people to express emotions in extreme ways. I think it has very little to do with how society functions normally. Fingers in mid-type must have some direct pipeline to the id. I want this, I don't want that. A plague on your entire genetic line for taking away something I enjoy. I don't read much into those extreme statements.

However, George Lucas did rape my childhood. Repeatedly and wantonly.

Re: Geeks:

I agree with you as far as how sometimes we need a reality check.

But I think that this really only applies to when we get stuck repeating these irrational thoughts and acknowledging them as if they were normal, but not for the simple outing and discussion of our frustrations or our fleeting theories about "taking action" or something.

Discussion is good, dwelling on things is not.

Sorry if I just re-stated what you were already saying.

No shit...

Surely the question here should be: how on earth have we reached a point where such barbarous language can be considered ‘cool’?

I don't find the language cool, but I accept it. And sometimes, that's scary. Shouldn't I bat an eye when someone theatens another persons life? Why do I laugh? I blame television, and there lays the irony.

Also, attention everybody:

Stop taking every post that someone makes at literal face value.

Seriously, if any joke about death--no matter how unfunny--is gonna upset you this much, maybe it's time to take a break from the internet.

You would value faces, you shallow piece of shit.

Perhaps I am nothing more than an ‘aged prude’ but these days find it very difficult to appreciate barbarous language.

Whilst I concede that I once found monstrous, foul or offensive diction to be ‘cool’, I have now reached a point where I regard such to be completely distasteful and juvenile. Perhaps it has something to do with becoming a father – who knows?

All I will say to CHUD members is that if you can’t make your point using the 60,000+ English words that aren’t in any way offensive, it’s probably best not to bother. As for preposterous statements such as ‘I hope they all die’ – all I will say is that, in my opinion, they aren’t elegant or witty.

I recommend that you shut up before I shoot you in the face with a Bazooka.

Finally, someone has the balls to start a campaign against hyperbole!

I love it how instead of just PM'ing me, this somehow warrants its own thread. What's this, twice in a single week?

It's really simple...my joke might have not been funny. It might have not been particularly clever. But it *was* a joke (c'mon...in a thread filled with "Fuck the WB executives!" posts, if you can't see how ridiculously over-the-top and hyperbolic it was to wish the death of an innocent child, you're not paying attention). Get some perspective. My tongue-in-cheek remark hardly deserves this type of attention. And in the future, if you've got a problem with me, either PM me or state your problems to my face. These vauge little holier-than-thou threads are obnoxious and childish.

Also, for the record, not once in my life have I ever heard "monstrous" language. Words are just words, folks. This is just an internet message board. Perspective.

Charles could've been much more successful if he started a parody thread.

Its worked for me!

Edited because never mind. This isn't worth fighting over.

It was a joke. That's all. Sorry if you were offended or whatever.

This is why you will never be more than a hack writer. Words are more than just words, they are also non-random collection of letters.

I do think it says something about the world that Charles took Slater seriously. Yes it may have been a joke, but there are certainly people in that thread and similar ones that were being serious. And frankly getting that worked up over a TV show is a bit silly. In the words of the Shatner, "Get a life!".

I dunno. Hyperbole is pretty funny, and geeks do it so well.

If I seriously expected for one minute that Slater would be killing people it would probably be worrying, but premeditated murder is too RL for geeks in general so I think the staff and executives of the world are safe, for now.

I think barbarous language is frequently hilarious, but then I am a barbarian.

Just as long as you don't run me over with your war chariot Alice.

<g>

Sorry, Orange, I can't hear you over the thunder of hooves and the cracking of my whip.

But enough of my sexual peccadilloes.

I think I can hear what you're saying about barbarous language. For instance, when Neil Cumpston posts a review at AICN I find it absolutely hilarious. It just packs in all of the joy of obscenity and hyperbole and geeks into a few paragraphs.

Now many people that laugh at the same things I do don't find that funny. It just offends and annoys them.

That said, there are things I should relax about, or at least ignore, but they totally get my goat. The fact that with all of the shit going on in the world the thing that makes the front page is some here-today-gone-tomorrow female "celebrity" "accidentally" showing off her gusset.

And I can completely see the argument for people wanting an escape from the affairs of the world (I'd certainly like to) and an argument too about how such pictures lighten the heart of the general populace as women are moved to scorn and men to lasciviousness. Neither of which speaks very well of us as human beings, but hey.

But I hate it.

I was having an interesting conversation at the seaside yesterday. In the UK, we used to call things that hinted at sex and rudeness "suggestive". As in, "that was a suggestive ad", or "I didn't like that man. His talk was suggestive." You used to be able to buy "saucy" and "suggestive" post cards at the seaside, you'll recall, before they were replaced with ones of nude breasts painted like faces and men bulging out of thongs.

And we suddenly realised that nobody says "suggestive" anymore. Because nothing is ever suggested. It's explicitly stated, over and over and over. And like most explicit repetitive statements, it's really obvious and boring.

Maybe you could say that about geeks and hyperbole. I could see how it would wind a person up. Though it does amuse me - possibly because I recognise myself in it.

Geeks are mostly an angry lot, Charles. This is how we vent. You know that everytime we wish death on Lucas, we are actually wishing death on Brett Finklestein who dumped our bookbag down the steps in 8th grade.
Forums like this are all that are keeping some geeks from going Columbine.

I see your point, though. Many of us here are getting a little too old to enjoy being so righteously angry over an episode of "Enterprise". Many of us will outgrow this place in a few years. Of course, that's assuming this site doesn't grow and evolve with us. If it doesn't, it's just time to move on and find or create a new forum.

Oh, and Slater. I didn't read whatever you posted that people are refering to here. But words aren't just words. As a writer you should recognize the kind of effect they can have. Write whatever you want, but don't backpeddle by saying, "Aw, it's just little words on a screen." Stand by what you write.

Oh don't misunderstand me Alice, I am every bit the hypocrite. My conversational English is absolutely appalling and often littered with ugly obscenities. I suppose I can throw some of the blame at my working environment which is certainly not a bastion of probity. Monkey see – Monkey do I guess.

Outside of work I’m not quite as bad – but still … I can hardly be considered much above a modern day Philistine. That said, I am trying to do something about the problem because, for the most part, it’s downright embarrassing when someone or other looks at you with absolute (and probably – deserved) disdain after you’ve uttered some obscenity within earshot.

Years ago, I wouldn’t have minded. Indeed – I might well have hurled a few more insults just to annoy them further, but now I’m becoming increasingly conscious of how I am perceived as a person by others. Maybe I’m just being silly – but I don’t want to known as ‘that idiot who can’t speak a sentence without using the words f***, c***, s*** etc’.

Again – maybe I'm just delusional. <grin>

As for the written word, that’s something different. I really have little tolerance for gratuitous ‘bad language’ in print. This is mainly because, unlike the spoken word where invariably you are in a mad rush to get ‘words out’, the writer has infinitely more time to think about what he is saying.

There’s no excuse for it in my opinion – especially since there is no shortage of inoffensive words in the English vocabulary that will suit the purpose just as, or even more, effectively.

Of course words are just words. They're nothing more than a collection of letters on a computer screen. Anybody who says differently is trying to sell you something. I was taking issue with the fact that certain words or phrases can be "monstrous" or obscene or shocking or immoral, because they can't, at least not until you ascribe your own values and beliefs over them. Can words be offensive? Sure, that's part of their charm. But when I think of "monstrous," I think of Clethnath the Goatdemon raping a Japanese schoolgirl while watching Triumph of the Will and Grace...not a simple dead baby joke on the internet. If you really find curse words and tasteless humor THAT unbearable--and this isn't directed at Orange, but at everybody--then the internet must be a sad, frightening place for you.

Also, just for the record, after Carroll's "Slater swears too much" thread a week or so ago, I hadn't *seriously* said "fuck" once before that Angel thread, and even then it was tongue-in-cheek. Not once. Which is it's a little disheartening when I keep getting singled out (both in these threads and in PMs) for single-handedly lowering the level of intelligent discourse. But whatever. Words are just words, right?

I still disagree. You're saying a writer is powerless to use words to illicit a response. That it all hinges on the reader. I think it's a collaborative effort. If your words illicit a response, they have power. Maybe not over everyone, but over certain readers.
Just because not everyone is offended by a dead baby joke, how does that completely strip your words of power? They were powerful enough to offend somebody. Why does that not count?

Here's the thing, though, Bob...writing isn't a static medium, it's an interpretive one. It's literally impossible to write a sentence that will offend every single person who reads it, just like it's impossible to write something that everybody will like, or even something that everybody will hate. The best that any writer can hope for is to suggest a specific response and cross his fingers that he gets it.

Taken on a word-for-word basis, there's nothing particularly remarkable about Shakespeare or Hemmingway or anybody else...they're just words. But when they're strung together in that particular order, those words prove to be really effective at eliciting a response from readers, but even that's not universal.

My point is that nine times out of ten, if you believe that a sentence or a joke is "monstrous," it's due to your own value structure or your own sense of humor. Certain people are always gonna laugh at a dead baby joke, while other people are always gonna be offended by one, REGARDLESS of the quality of the joke (or the lack thereof). That's the reason that I'm perfectly willing to apologize for offending Fett with my joke, but I'm not gonna apologize for making the joke in the first place.

Gotcha.