| The Power of Words Goblins, imps, and farfadets, I've got quite the RC for you today. The power of words! What do I mean, exactly? In this time of instant information, and putting up things all over the internet, (art, music, your picture) you type and read a lot. You're reading right now, even! So it's imperative that you know the power of words. We'll be going through three things today, "theory", "insults", and "like and suck". Theory Let's take the phrase, "Happy birthday!" and play with it. It's a pretty general term, right? I mean, you celebrate it once a year, and people are generally like, "Oh, yes, happy birthday!" and depending on who they are and how sensitive you are, you're generally pleased. But now, let's say this is from someone you don't really like. They come up to you and say "Happy birthday." and you know there's bad blood between you... it's very likely they meant that in a crude way, right? That's how you'd take it, why should an enemy of yours randomly be nice to you? Alright, and now let's say... you wake up, it's Saturday morning, and your mother made a big breakfast for you, and she says, "Happy birthday! :D", and you feel just oh so special, because she meant happy birthday so much that she made you breakfast! And one more before I bore you to tears, let's say there is a disabled person in the family, and you're taking care of him, and he's kinda losin' it, got alzheimer's, and you told him two weeks ago that your birthday is ____ date. Everyone in your family forgot, you're feeling down, but no. Uncle Cletus remembered. He slowly moves his head to you as you walk through the room, and whispers with his raspy voice, "Happy birthdugh." There. Don't you just feel wonderful? The theory is that words have different meaning coming from certain people, or certain situations. A final example, let's say you are going to the barber's for a haircut and shave. (women, work with me here) And all of a sudden, the barber says "So! Have you seen the movie 'Sweeney Todd'?". In this particular situation, you should probably leave because Sweeney Todd was a barber who slit peoples' throats, and you'd like to not share the same fate. But if you're at your cousin's house and you just finished a popsicle, you're sitting on the porch at sunset, and he asks you the very same question, you're going to think that maybe he wants to rent the movie to view it with you, or just wants to talk about it. You should now have a fair understanding of how words and meanings work. Insults Sometimes you need to insult people over the internet. This usually happens in debate or CounterStrike games. And no, this portion of the RC doesn't pertain to just 'net stuff, it's insulting in general. You wanna make a bang, you gotta insult the person. If you really think "your mom" jokes are going to get you anywhere, you're sadly mistaken. You can insult my father all you want, but I wouldn't give too much a damn, because set aside from what you've seen on the front page (and probably read in the bio) you never really knew him too well, so why should I care? Right, on to the actual section now. You have to hit home. Call me short all day, it's nothing I didn't already know. Say my genitalia (which doesn't exist) is small, based on my height. Is that really supposed to offend me, your ignorance? If anything, you've offended yourself by proving you are ignorant. In that particular instance, you've also shown you care a lot more about my genitalia than anything I can control. You see, the ultimate way to insult people is to find something wrong about them, honestly wrong, and they know it's true (or you make it apparent to them that it is) and they do nothing to change it. Calling someone fat is a great insult, do you know why? And for my fat audience, I am so -so- sorry, and I know there are some out there who are happy with their weight, and if so, you shouldn't be offended when someone calls you fat. But you see, fat is not healthy. Fat is not generally accepted as attractive. Fat is not good, and that's why people get offended by it. That's why there's diets. And as I've said, that is now a very great and wonderful insult. However, it's still not great enough, no! Because it's aesthetics. It's outside. Yes, your inside mentality does tell you to not exercise, but really the ultimate thing to insult is someone's habits or intelligence. In these times of pseudo-intelligence, it's easy to pick out the dumb from the smart. I know someone who reads books alllllll the time, and probably has read my RC on english, and yet... still confuses "you're" and "your". A lot of times on the internet you'll see people calling other people dumb for saying "u" instead of "you" or "2" instead of "too", and they are partially correct in doing that. I'm smart, and typing like that makes me feel dumb. I don't even read that many books; I play games and watch/read stuff on the 'net more. (for entertainment) Grammar is so simple to grasp. Just today I saw how to spell pseudo correctly, and that's that. When I run my articles through spellcheck, I see more green lines than red, and that's just Word being an asshole to me. So yes, back to insulting... it'd be a great insult for me to tell that one person that though he reads so much, still he doesn't know how to write correctly? That's an insult of intelligence right there, and he should be greatly offended. There is also a time when insults are just uncalled for. One time I was very angry at the Guild Wars staff for not allowing us to have extra heroes, and forcing me to party with filthy humans to get stuff done. There was an appreciation topic saying "o wuw u guys are gr8 lmao ^-^" and they seemed to really like it, and the organic dark matter known as Vael Victus just had to come in and bitch at them for being incompetent. So I was then scolded, and I did feel bad and I apologized and left the topic ashamed. That's about that for now. Like and suck. This is my official pet peeve that people do. "suck" "this band sucks, this movie sucked, this art sucks, you suck, we all suck" Firstly, saying "suck" is not very classy at all, and to anyone who is refined in the least bit, you will look like a colossal schmuck. Secondly, you're 99% of the time wrong. Suck, according to the internet and all that is good, is known exactly to mean "of poor quality". YES I understand people MEAN it as an opinion, but if so, then you just say you don't like it. Here's how I would say I don't like the band... Children of Bodom. ( I don't ) "I dislike the band because, while I do enjoy their guitar work, I really don't like the way they growl, and you could never get into their lyrics. The drums sounded too generic, just regular beats." I didn't say the way they growled sucked, and I said I couldn't get into their lyrics. I DID however NOT say "I think their drums sounded too generic" because it's understood that when I opened my statement with "I dislike", that I wasn't being a colossal schmuck. If need came to prove their drums sounded generic, however, it'd be quite difficult to prove that because you'd have to take examples of a lot of bands who drum that way. You don't always have to care that much, and when you say "I don't like ____ because ____", it's just a personal opinion we form. Sooooo many arguments could be stopped if you had just said "I don't like that band." instead of "That band sucks." To prove a band sucks, you have to go to pretty far lengths. If their musicality is terrible, you can at least say their instrumental skills are good. Perfect example would be (unfortunately, I say in my opinion, so I save myself from being wrong) Michaelangelo Batio. GUY IS AMAAAAAZING at the guitar, has two guitars forged into one, does crazy stuff with them, he's hit like 32 notes in one second or something, it's great! Unfortunately, his music SOUNDS like all he's doing is playing his instrument, when it lacks complete musicality. To back this up, the best I could say is that many people do agree with me. But if I got a room full of ignorant hip-hoppers and showed them Unexpect (one of the most talented acts I've seen) they would say it "sucked", when really, their untrained ears and stupid brains just can't handle that much stuff going on at once. So you can see it gets really complicated here. It is best to say you don't like something instead of saying it sucks because: * You don't look like a colossal schmuck. Well that about wraps it up, this is one of my longest RCs and took well over an hour to write, I hope you enjoyed it. Semantically yours,
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