Monday, April 10, 2017

Internet Manners

I don't claim to have a greatly refined set of them. I have noticed that I often annoy others.

15 years ago and more, I had a very hard time understanding the overwhelmingly negative response when I posted on a social site in a bigger-than-average font.

I understand it now. Oh boy oh boy, do I ever understand it. Because a plague has settled into my circle of online friends and acquaintances, and perhaps into yours too: these posts consisting of brightly-colored squares with large-font words inside of them.

You were right to think that your message of "Oh, this is terrible!" or "Why did they do that?" was not interesting enough, all by itself, to be a regular post in a regular font. Your mistake was thinking that putting it in big white letters inside of one of these brightly-colored squares was going to make it more interesting, or more anything other than annoying. Putting it into a big font was already making it more annoying, and this with the squares, I don't care if Mark Zuckerberg thought it up personally, it's making it even worse. Somebody say "Amen!" Someone else shout, "Stop it!" If you notice eventually that I've unfollowed you and you're wondering why, this might well be it.

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