liloQui Pro Tips // The Internet Commenter Style Guide
It’s happened again. You’re perusing your favorite blog, reading a story about, I don’t know, the drinking habits of cats in the Ukraine.
As usual, the piece itself is a little bland, but once you reach the end you stumble upon one of the digital age’s most precious delights: the comments section. Normally you scan through the responses on a given article for a good laugh or two, but tonight, something has caught your eye:
ALL CATS R DUM U GUYS R SO DUM I H8 U ONCE I WENT TO ENGLIND AND THIS LADEE SED THURRZ NO KATS IN THE UK SO THIS IS SO FAKE I H8 CATS <3 *~to the WORLD you may just be ONE PERSON but to ONE PERSON you may just be the WORLD!~*
For some reason, this post eats at you. Why does it exist? It’s so horrible in its inefficacy and its incomprehensible language that you don’t even know where to begin attacking it. It’s difficult to pinpoint what’s most infuriating about it. Is it the compulsive use of the caps lock that’s getting you down? Or maybe this person’s clear geographical confusion? Perhaps some punctuation would clear this up, and what’s with the canned quote at the end there? As you stew over your response, typing and editing and approaching near-deadly heart rates, your mind grows fuzzy and your cunning rhetorical skill fades. You’d think that in the five minutes it takes you to type out a new post, you would have cooled down enough to walk away from the situation altogether, but no. Instead, you post this:
Shut up jerk nobody asked you and its UKRAINE not UK maybe next time you should read before you start showing off your ignorance. This is suppose to be a civil conversation you stupid piece of trash.
It’s not your best work. We’ll skip over your many mistakes for now and wait for a response. Not five minutes later, the return volley arrives:
I WUZ BORN IN UKRAYN SHUT UR MOUTH HOWS UR MOMMA TELL HER I SAID HI <3 *~to the WORLD you may just be ONE PERSON but to ONE PERSON you may just be the WORLD!~*
It’s amazing to see how quickly conversation breaks down when everyone is hiding between a wall of anonymity. Apparently, behind this wall, all people are actually trolls, and everyone has been stuck in the second grade for decades. But you’re better than this, right? You’re an articulate person with valid opinions and there’s no reason you shouldn’t be owning every message board you grace with your personal attacks and unwarranted fact checking. The whole world will benefit if we all were a little less troll…
…and a little more Churchill.
With this noble purpose in mind, we at liloQui have pledged to curate the first official Internet Commenter Style Guide, a quick reference for those looking to add just a little class to their comments. By going back to the basics of English style and usage, we’ve compiled a shortlist of tips and tricks to help you look as educated and smug as you possibly can while spreading your opinions across the web. The guide can be found on its own separate page, where it will continue to grow and evolve to better suit the needs of the common Internet commenter. Here’s the link:
THE INTERNET COMMENTER STYLE GUIDE
Check it out for some good knowledge and for instructions on how you can submit new rules in an effort to combat poorly written Internet comments, and be sure to share the link any time you come across a comment that looks like the examples shared above. Together, we can make the web a classier place, one message board at a time.
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