With the expansion of the Internet & lack of paper delivery here in the boonies, I wake up each morning with coffee & my computer…checking news, blogs, social networking, and the one special-interest forum I belong to.* Although I enjoy reading more than one view of current events & catching up with family, friends & acquaintances, I’m starting to re-think that process. Why?
Apart from the news (which seemingly is all bad these days), I’m seeing so much intolerance in the Pagan community it’s heartbreaking. “You’re not doing it right.” “You can’t be X if you do Y.” “You believe what? You’re nuts!” What ever happened to “whatever floats your boat” and/or “can’t we all just get along”? I don’t always think or believe the same way my friends do, yet we would never criticize one another’s path (which is one of the reasons they’re my friends).
My second problem is people (and I hate to point fingers but it seems to be the younger generation) who want to be spoon-fed. For example: that forum gets new members who, rather than read the thousands of posts (much less the stickies/pinned posts), start right in asking questions whose answers are easily found with a little searching and a lot of reading. A second example: a popular author I follow on Twitter is constantly pointing querents to his FAQ rather than answer the same question for the hundredth (thousandth?) time.
And don’t get me started on the lack of even-close-to proper grammar & spelling! Every social networking site & every forum that I’m aware of have built-in spellcheck. OK, the software isn’t perfect but all the red squiggly lines seem to get ignored. (I just googled a word this software didn’t recognize to ensure I’d spelled it correctly – but only because I’m too Sunday-lazy to walk upstairs to look it up in one of four dictionaries on the shelf.) I also know there are word usages spellcheck won’t pick up but come on! You’ve undoubtedly seen the “there/their/they’re” problem. But “dose” for “does”? Some things I read are so horribly written it’s difficult to discern the meaning behind the “words”. Is it our education system or laziness?
I’ve always admitted to being an old hippie but maybe I’m just getting old. My tolerance for intolerance is rapidly waning. So’s my tolerance for lack of the “hard work” mentality. And I don’t think there’s enough coffee in the world to solve that attitude.
A friend of mine lives on a boat & starts his morning with the sea. I’m not anywhere near the ocean but I think I’m going to follow his example & start my morning with the woods. They don’t do human drama…they just are. So, if you don’t see me on the Internet in the morning, you might want to look outside. Perhaps if I have a less-irritating start to my day, it will end with me being less irritated, as well.
//end rant
* Yes, I’m well aware one shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition. “The one forum to which I belong” sounds rather stilted, don’t you think? I try to save the formal writing for business letters.
1 Comment
I agree wholeheartedly.
I’m beginning to think that I should avoid comments on news stories. I tend to get all snarky.
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