I was a disappointment to my father

[recovering_fan]

The level of animosity in these forums is unbelievable. There seems to be a contest to see who can come up with the worst insult. Many of the post-election exchanges between liberals and conservatives remind me of junior high and elementary school children yelling at each other. The concept of "able to know" hardly ever is a reality....It's all about overinflated egos having their way with others instead of trying to understand them.

I just visited the site. They do like to talk!

Many of them (not anyone here) reminded me of an extremely lame comedy sketch that I saw on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d80dW3u7Mhk

Cheers,
RF

PS--The young women in the sketch are spoofing feminism. I don't endorse their position, but I still got a giggle out of it.

EDIT (04/06/11):

I no longer feel this way about the members of A2K. They are confident and self-assured; that is all. It's not a crime to like yourself or to acknowledge that you are gifted, if in fact you are. Some day maybe I'll even learn to like myself. There would be nothing wrong with that at all.

[i_like_1981]

Yeah, when you go out searching the wide wide world of internet forums you encounter some real hardcore posters who make Fat Man and Earl's totals on here look positively miniscule. I was messing round on a sports forum earlier this year, the SPORTING NEWS, and I saw one guy who had a post count of more than 80,000. Yes, he'd done more than 80,000 posts in five years. And these sports fans say that us "nerds" spend too long on the computer?

Best regards,
i_like_1981

[Fat Man]

Yeah, when you go out searching the wide wide world of internet forums you encounter some real hardcore posters who make Fat Man and Earl's totals on here look positively miniscule. I was messing round on a sports forum earlier this year, the SPORTING NEWS, and I saw one guy who had a post count of more than 80,000. Yes, he'd done more than 80,000 posts in five years. And these sports fans say that us "nerds" spend too long on the computer?

Best regards,
i_like_1981

Well, I have seen a lot of sports forums where most of the members are semi-literate at best, having a very limited vocabulary like a Kindergartner, and posting 3 to 7 word sentences like . . . . .

football is the best, its the gr8test

yeah, i agree

if u dont like football u r a fag (OK, that's 9 words!)

i love football

me 2

i agree 2

Anyway, it's very easy to clock in 80,000 forum posts when posting such short sentences which are merely parroting what everybody else is saying.

Hell, you just have to type one letter and click on submit, and do this over and over again and then, any moron could get in 80,000 forum posts.

It's that simple!

[Silence]

Well, judging from what I've read, I'll put my input of impressions and the like. Yes, I used to be impressionable when I was very young, maybe around 10 or 11. I quite learned it was a very bad idea to let your ignorance of the world take over you. It's like a feeling of being lied to in a way, you're tricked, and you pay the consequences in the end for a hefty price. On regards to able2know, it does not sound like a place I would ever join, not now, not ever. I'm quite glad I have found it at my current age, since I now am able to at least identify and put my hate of sport in correct context. Plus, not to be offending to anyone, but I normally find sports fans to be... Unpleasant to be around with.

I also find it quite hypocritical when some sports fans call us nerds, they're obviously spending so much time on the computer since some of the post counts mentioned on this thread have amassed into 5-figure numbers, and in 5 years as well! I couldn't even hit those kinds of numbers if I could even try, I want my posts to at least mean something and be of worth.

Well, I have seen a lot of sports forums where most of the members are semi-literate at best, having a very limited vocabulary like a Kindergartner, and posting 3 to 7 word sentences like . . . . .

football is the best, its the gr8test

yeah, i agree

if u dont like football u r a fag (OK, that's 9 words!)

i love football

me 2

i agree 2

Once again, I am not trying to be offensive to anyone, but I find this terrible. I just really cannot stand that type of typing. It's really hard to decipher and at times, it does not even make sense at all. I understand the concepts of being quick, clear, and concise. But this isn't the right way to do it.

[i_like_1981]

Yeah, I absolutely can't stand textspeak or abbreviations on an intelligent debating forum. God forbid that some people should take a few extra seconds out of their riveting social lives to at least write the fucking words properly and not look like they're doing a half-assed job of typing code whenever they send someone a message. It's just stupid. I admit that I did it a few times on the SPORTING NEWS forum but heck... when you're in unfamiliar territory you've got to learn the lingo. Otherwise how can you be understood?

And another fucking stupid thing: some idiots use the abbreviation "ur" for both "your" and "you're". What the fucking hell is that about? Imagine typing this: they say ur ur own worst enemy. Do they honestly expect me to differentiate between the two forms myself because they're too damn lazy to do so? Honestly. This is what happens when daft little boys get hold of big toys like the Internet.

Best regards,
i_like_1981

[Earl]

And another fucking stupid thing: some idiots use the abbreviation "ur" for both "your" and "you're". What the fucking hell is that about? Imagine typing this: they say ur ur own worst enemy. Do they honestly expect me to differentiate between the two forms myself because they're too damn lazy to do so? Honestly.

That reminds me. At several different websites I've come across posts in which the people who submitted them failed to use the actual words "your" and "you're" correctly. I thought this was something that was learned in junior high school at the latest. I'm convinced these were grown adults who were not differentiating "your" and "you're" from each other. Why do they do this? Is this an Internet fad, are they woefully ignorant of English grammar, or are they just incredibly careless?

[i_like_1981]

That mistake infuriates me as well. It really isn't that hard to grasp but so few people on the internet seem to comprehend the fact that "your" and "you're" are not the same and that they have correct and incorrect usage. I do hope that these people are just clumsy or too lazy to type the apostrophe and extra letter that come with "you're", because if they don't actually understand the difference between those words, it's a very shameful statement on our modern educational system. I actually find "ur" less reprehensible than "your" or "you're" used incorrectly. At least that person has made it clear that they can't be bothered typing out either word - they may know, but they're too lazy to show it. Those who can't differentiate between "your" and "you're"... I pity them.

Best regards,
i_like_1981

[Fat Man]

That mistake infuriates me as well. It really isn't that hard to grasp but so few people on the internet seem to comprehend the fact that "your" and "you're" are not the same and that they have correct and incorrect usage. I do hope that these people are just clumsy or too lazy to type the apostrophe and extra letter that come with "you're", because if they don't actually understand the difference between those words, it's a very shameful statement on our modern educational system. I actually find "ur" less reprehensible than "your" or "you're" used incorrectly. At least that person has made it clear that they can't be bothered typing out either word - they may know, but they're too lazy to show it. Those who can't differentiate between "your" and "you're"... I pity them.

Best regards,
i_like_1981

I don't pity them! I despise them!

They're morons! And illiterate or semi-literate morons are usually sports fans or jocks who bully people around.

You can tell if someone is a bully just by the way they use words.

So, people who don't know the difference between your and you're should go to prison, be locked up for life so they can't bully people around.

Morons are dangerous and need to be put away to make our schools safer for the more brighter students.

There is no excuse for such ignorance.

We've been to the moon and back six times! We have sent deep space probes to the outer planets, we have landed unmanned probes on Mars, we have all kind of technology developed by science and EDUCATED people, so there is no excuse for ignorance.

Oh wait a minute! I take that back!

Our schools only teach sports and how to fold paper footballs so we now import well educated techno-geeks from overseas.

So, I guess there is an excuse.

No! I change my mind again!

We have allowed the quality of education to go down the crapper in our schools. And our Texas State Board of Education (Indoctrination) has removed Thomas Jefferson from the history textbooks and replaced him with John Calvin, a religious fanatic who a few centuries ago had people tortured to death, which is no surprise because the Bush Administration had war prisoners tortured and water-boarded.

And the CONservative Republican members of the Texas Board of Indoctrination want to insert Creationist fairy tales into the science textbooks and eventually remove Darwin's Evolution.

That's why so many high school students in the USA are so fucking ignorant, and go around beating up and bullying the brighter students.

The people responsible for causing the declining quality of education should be charged with TREASON, and if found guilty in a court of law, then they should be executed by firing squad!

No blindfold and no last cigarette!

BANG! BANG!

[recovering_fan]

The concept of "able to know" hardly ever is a reality...

I just visited the site, again.

I have changed my mind about them. You tend at places like that to notice a certain small but loud and abusive minority, and if you focus on that minority, you miss all the interesting things that are being said.

I still do not believe anyone under the age of 21 should join that site, because of the rough conduct of the small minority.

--RF

[i_like_1981]

21 seems like a bit excessive to me. How about 16? But anyways, no matter how hard you try and implement age restrictions on certain content, you're always going to get kids who give themselves the wrong birth dates so that they can view age-restricted content. The only way that would definitely solve the age-restriction problems would be to ban ALL age-restricted content from the internet and there's no way you can do that. So yeah, you're always going to have daft little kids making their way into things that they just can't handle. As for able2know... I couldn't help but feel a bit shocked at their reactions to the issue of bullying on a certain thread that was brought to my attention earlier this year. Most of them seemed to encourage the idea of kids receiving no support for their problems and that they have to learn to sort things out themselves. I agree that this can work in some situations and that people shouldn't be completely mollycoddled, but when you've got half the whole school year making your life hard, there's only so much you can do on your own. Some people rely on others' help too much. Others desperately need it but can't get it. It's an unfair world we live in...

Best regards,
i_like_1981

Edit: On a completely irrelevant note, I actually typed out my name as i_like_1991 there and was about to click Submit when I realised my error. Whoops! That one could have cost me!