“Charles Manson ate apples. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to.”
Marianne Williamson
Online Qualifiers
Writers are always trying to fix language. Putting fingers to keys often enough, one sees where things fall short. Those crazy writers will write big bunches of pages on how to fix it. Remember “wymin” for “women”? They try, they really do.
We now all agree to use “their” for a single person so we can dance around gender. It took a long time and it is still clumsy.
Our formal written language takes a long time to catch up to changes in the world. That is a good thing. We can still kind of debate the Oxford Comma. I’m all for changing to “tho” instead of “though” though, it makes sense. I hate “how r u”.
I hate even more the online chat of the question mark. I can type a small paragraph and my reader responds “?”. And I have to back up and type another mountain while he/she shir is not paying attention.
The big qualifier that I want in language is a mark or word that denotes an online person. That would clean things up a lot.
“I know a woman who bakes apples for breakfast”.
That statement is fine, really. If the woman is my next door neighbor, that statement stands strong. However, if the woman I know is an online person, then there would be inherent doubt laced over the whole statement.
We would not accept the statement openly. There is zero assurance that anything in that statement is true. I might make up the whole thing to change your mind.
Crazy writers have crazy solutions. I would propose a capital where one doesn’t belong to denote an online person.
“I know a Woman who bakes apples for breakfast”. This tells you to take everything that this woman says very carefully.
“I have a Friend who makes pipe bombs”.
“A Girl told me She loves me last night”.
“My Friend is in the hospital and needs money in Her gofundme site”.
It takes us a while to catch up with new technology as a big wide society. Just because it is here and in our business doesn’t mean that we are wise to its use.
I remember when Broad Band came out (before you were born). We suddenly had tools like Yahoo Messenger to share camera feeds, we could type and talk with no camera and forums to meet were popping up. The big question was “Is online sex cheating?”. I mean, if I don’t really know this person who lives across the country, how can it be real? The answer came soon enough, of course it is cheating. But, it took a while to get it.
In the information barrage, we are getting weak truth and compounding and spreading this weak truth until it is warped beyond recognition but stated strongly as fact. It is time for honest People to step up and add some kind of qualifier when they spread information; even if it is about baked apples for breakfast.
The Profound Bartender 