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Ben X

Didactic Thumbs (Pedantry Corner)

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8 minutes ago, TheLastBaron said:

What about saying "ult"? Is it specifically the" i"? 

Ult is fine and good. It is absolutely the "i". Adding the I makes something that was a clean and straightforward shortening of a word and adds a vestigial second syllable that doesn't do anything but make it worse.

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I agree about Ulti, but the thing about Resi is you can't just shorten it to "Res" cause that's too far removed from the actual phrase to be properly readable. At least to my ears.

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1 hour ago, Badfinger said:

Here's some true pedantry!

 

No, it's just your personal taste. If anything, it's fake pedantry.

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You gotta know there's lots of non native english speakers speaking english and inventing the jargon along the way. Ulti might be easier to roll off the tongue in different languages. It's also 1 syllable vs 2.

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Just now, Jutranjo said:

You gotta know there's lots of non native english speakers speaking english and inventing the jargon along the way. Ulti might be easier to roll off the tongue in different languages. It's also 1 syllable vs 2.

How is it one syllable?

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42 minutes ago, Ben X said:

 

No, it's just your personal taste. If anything, it's fake pedantry.

How dare you, my monocle's fogging in rage!

 

12 minutes ago, Jutranjo said:

You gotta know there's lots of non native english speakers speaking english and inventing the jargon along the way. Ulti might be easier to roll off the tongue in different languages. It's also 1 syllable vs 2.

 

That's pretty much what I'm saying. It's half the syllables to say it correctly. Like I said, I'm laying the blame firmly at the feet of the English.

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I think he means "ult" vs "ulti". 1 vs 2.

 

"Ulti" is more clear because it's more distinct and sounds less like an accidental mouthfart than "ult" does.

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While we're talking about annoying shortening of words, I'm just going to go out and say that I can't stand seeing the word "ninty" instead of Nintendo.  I don't know how long people have been doing it, I'd never noticed it in my life until pretty recently, but it's probably been a thing for a while and I just live in a bubble.  To me it comes off as a cross between trying to make Nintendo sound like Sony and also giving Nintendo an affectionate pet name because you're such close pals.  It also always makes me think someone misspelled "ninety". 

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oh you wanna get in rage mode let's talk "solly", replacing the word "soldier" in tf2

 

i WILL fucking fight ANYONE over this

 

DON'T SAY IT

 

SOB SOB SOB

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9 hours ago, Twig said:

oh you wanna get in rage mode let's talk "solly", replacing the word "soldier" in tf2

 

i WILL fucking fight ANYONE over this

 

DON'T SAY IT

 

SOB SOB SOB

Yeah it's the worst.  Engy (or NG) I accept, but solly, nope.

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How do you define (if at all) "clickbait"? It seems at times to be a pointless term - of course articles have titles that make you want to read them; of course sites write articles people want to read. 

 

Is it to do with the title being misleading? Or an article that exists solely to push people's buttons ("10 reasons why women are worse than men")?

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I consider it to be a headline used to goad people into reading an article they'd have no interest in if you described it less hyperbolically. So it could be that it's designed to enrage, or catch curiousity, or confuse. But no matter what, in retrospect the headline is making promises that the article doesn't fulfill. 

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Interesting, thanks!

 

Can you describe an article as clickbait, or just a title?

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"Could The Next Star Wars Film Be Animated?"

Content: Disney exec says in interview that they have no plans for an animated Star Wars film.

 

Stuff like that.

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The article can be clickbait since part of my definition hinges upon the articles content being unrelated or vapid. 

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Okay, so is the relationship between the title and the article the crux of it, then? An article that exists solely to push people's buttons but has an accurate title is not clickbait? If dartmonkey's example article really is an article about a site full of boobs that is causing millions of people to cancel their subscription, it's not clickbait? If the title is temptingly misleading but it's a really good article, is that clickbait?

 

The main reason I'm Deep DivingTM into this is that whenever an article on, say, RPS involving LGBT issues comes up, one of the troll accusations thrown at it is "clickbait".

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3 hours ago, Ben X said:

Okay, so is the relationship between the title and the article the crux of it, then? An article that exists solely to push people's buttons but has an accurate title is not clickbait? If dartmonkey's example article really is an article about a site full of boobs that is causing millions of people to cancel their subscription, it's not clickbait? If the title is temptingly misleading but it's a really good article, is that clickbait?

 

The main reason I'm Deep DivingTM into this is that whenever an article on, say, RPS involving LGBT issues comes up, one of the troll accusations thrown at it is "clickbait".

I think there are two types. Classic click bait is just a salacious headline with a mindane article. But some sites get accused of writing purposely controversial articles as a way to drive traffic. Jezebel is a good example of this, they thrive off outrage.

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Yeah, that second type is probably the one I see and the one I find rather pointless - it presumes to know the mindset of the writer/site, and can potentially be levelled at any article, with no evidence or logic.

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I also think of articles where they purposefully obscure what would otherwise be an obvious answer to the question the article headline asks or teases.

 

"There's a man innovating how taxis are run, and who he is might surprise you"

 

A: It's the CEO of a big taxi company.

 

When in real life the NY Times would have (it now also writes clickbait headlines) written the title as something like Yellow Taxi CEO Proposes New Taxi Regulations to Compete in Today's World or whatever.

 

It's articles where you have to click to even find out what the SUBJECT of the article is, rather than being interested in reading the article.

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Yeah, whenever I see something where it's "[...] and you'll never guess what happens next!" and "what happens next" is what most people would assume happens next, that's what I consider clickbait.

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On 8/5/2014 at 3:43 PM, Ben X said:

Basically, no need to be rude just because you're pointing out to someone that they're misusing "ret-con".

 

'Ret-con' is getting misused in the Blade Runner thread! Revealing something undisclosed in previous films is not a ret-con. The reveal at the end of Empire Strikes Back is not a ret-con. If that were the case, every piece of relayed information within a single film would be a ret-con! A ret-con is when the audience is asked to ignore a previously established fact, with no in-universe justification. So in Red Dwarf, where previously it was stated that Lister and Kochanski only spoke 15 words to each other in their lives, but in season 7 the writers bring her on as a regular character and decide that actually they had a full romantic relationship, that's a ret-con.

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I'll say you're technically right as I used the term as a slight bit of hyperbole to make a point. However, I don't completely agree as that leaves a loophole for aspiring retconners: new meaning can be inserted into a work about anything that hasn't been said outright or shown, which muddles the original meaning of the work. Compare the The Hobbit in its original form to Jackson's films, which take great pains to connect events from Lord of the Rings to Hobbit, while the scale and tone of the original book are discarded. I think the Blade Runner sequel treats the original in a similar way, except to a lesser and more subtle extent. I'll post a defense of my use of the word in the movie's thread.

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