General Discussion

Originally posted by Mahni

Is the pedantic style I've used above suited for this forum?  Is it suitable because each word could be understood, or because the style is suitable for the audience?

  A bit of both, though communication has always been about what works in a given situation and context.

  It seems with your actual reply to me (which I didn't quote because we'd have a page long quote-on-quote thing) was centered around why, based on the fact that some communication is bad situationally, it cannot be good at all.  First, I want to say that nearly all of these "Bad Words" or "Unprofessional" words we have as only defined as such because we have programmed ourselves to think that way.  This aside, my actual point wasn't about whether everything we say and do is wholesale socially acceptable.  It was directed at the fact that one cannot DESTROY language by simply adding to it. 

  The largest factor here is that our entire western English language IS trash.  When we came here and founded this country, certain powerful figures here decided to change some of the core concepts of the old language in a greater effort to divide us from the lands we hailed from.  In short, US English is nothing more than ghetto slang based off of actual English.  So when I hear people talk about internet slang, or actual ghetto slang, as though its destroying our language...I can barely keep a straight face.  Granted, I hate many of the terms used in either myself...but that has little to do with how much its destroying my own language and, instead, how it makes the user of such things look.  Language is one of the first things a person notices about you, and is key in first impression.

Originally posted by Gishgeron

 

 

 

  What I find interesting is that we can even SAY that communication is being destroyed, and actually believe it.  Communication cannot be "destroyed".  It can only be added to.  The fact is...if I say "LOL" out loud, every last one of us would know exactly what I meant and how it pertained to the conversation.  That means that "LOL" was valid as a communication device.

  In the end, as long as whatever is being used is both understood and effective....its a perfectly FINE communication device.  To say otherwise is pure ignorance since the entire American English language is nothing more than a pure bastardization of the ACTUAL English language it was spawned from since inception.

 LOL Is supposed to stand for LAugh out loud? Whatever happened to just laughing? If you are not laughing  what is the point of LOL?  Yes knowing  what it means but the fact that you are saying "LOL" instead of just  is not the same. When you really Laugh your brain produces endorphins, saying "LOL" replaces that as well? You plan on saying "LOL" during a job interview? Anyhow, the point being is that people can be very good typers but then have no sense of presentation in person.  When I hear these people on voice chat they seem like they have little or no verbal communication skills, which is actually more important than having typing skills. You are going to be solving issues with your wife via text one day? Do job interviews via text? Give a presentation via text only? I hope not, I sure wouldn't hire you.  From what I have seen is  that alot of the people that are very good with communicating via text are not very good communicating  in person. I think that actually adding voice chat in games would help reduce that, Teach the kids how to speak properly, it seems they already know how to type.

Originally posted by gath

 

Originally posted by Redslayer
[...]

Funny, on the same post you prove you havent read the thread, you cant find info that is 1 click away, and you contradict yourself.

 

Let me guess, you need me to point what is which, dont you...?

Interesting. I would have actually came up with a better response for this, if it had any merrit behind it. But all I'll say is, I didn't contradict myself.

You fail.

Originally posted by declaredemer

I understand it is trite to say, "WoW dumbs people down."  There is, however, an element of truth to it.

 

WoW has invited WoW=sp33k, which is communicating without actually 1) saying anything or 2) adhering to rules of proper grammar.  Moreover, the gameplay/content in WoW requires little to no strategic thinking, planning, or any other skills of the mind.  You kill five boars, you collect five boar tusks, and you return to the NPC with five boar tusks.  You then obtain a new quest.  The community in WoW lends itself to this, and most members of the community do not speak English, which creates it own language barriers that exacerbate the problems of WoW-sp33k. 

 

[If you read to this point, you probably do not suffer from WoW's attention deficit disorder.]

 

[Edit:  by the way, sense my humor and sarcasm are not detectable online, this is a joke - mostly.]

[btw - it is supposed to be since - wink*wink*.  Points if you detect other errors.]

 

I actually enjoyed EQ much more then WOW.  I think part of the reason was the younger crowd that Blizzard had to sacrafice for.  They tailored the game to the 8-17 crowd more with the type of skills and thinking required to play the game.  They basically noobified the MMO genre by giving every kid a reason to play, lets make  a macro press one button and kill everyon yey.

I played the shit out of both games and they both made me smarter.... Everquest's base game may be a more thought provoking game and World of Warcraft may be a cartoony dumb game but people are what made me smart not reading quests and what not.  Dealing with guilds members and leaders has made me a lot smarter in terms in working in groups and I only went endgame in World of Warcraft.  I'm not a fanboy of either and I currently play no online games.  But I think any game with online interaction will make people smarter generally. Sorry for the typos I wrote this in a hurry.

Originally posted by gath

 

Originally posted by brostyn

Originally posted by gath

Originally posted by brostyn

Look up the word acronym, You used one in your sentence, genius.

** warning, amusement detector broken, warning **

Right. Attacking me because I used "LMAO" was amusing. I'm sorry I missed that great joke.

I didnt attacked, i stated a fact. I guess you also missed that...

 

You didn't state a fact. Unless, of course, you went through the trouble of hiring someone with an MSc in psychology, and forced everybody who used the acronym 'lmao' in a sentence to an IQ test, to check and see if their IQ was sub-120.

And you do realise that many psychologists feel that IQ tests are too unreliable to properly measure intelligence without any sort of cultural bias?

How in the world you got this idea in your head, I don't know, but lets put the two in perspective.  EQ was a pain in the butt to play, while Wow is actually fun.  What do you not understand about that?  Nothing against EQ when it was released there was only UO out there and UO was a pvp maven while EQ was the pve king and pretty much established that pve was the more desired facet.

You would think with millions of subscribers the majority of people would try to act mature. But then again thats what I get for thinking.

Originally posted by Praetoriani

 

 

You didn't state a fact. Unless, of course, you went through the trouble of hiring someone with an MSc in psychology, and forced everybody who used the acronym 'lmao' in a sentence to an IQ test, to check and see if their IQ was sub-120.

And you do realise that many psychologists feel that IQ tests are too unreliable to properly measure intelligence without any sort of cultural bias?

It's so ironic how psychologists make the IQ tests too: It's as if they have something to prove about themselves. Perhaps it's due to the fact that the subject of this thread could serve as a thesis...

In any case, most hardcore raiders in WoW are at least able to use excel spreadsheets to project DPS and there are some physicists/mathematicians that actually play WoW. Everybody on this website likes to ignore facts, however, by assuming that actually enjoying a mainstream product makes you stupid. It's really the same kind of elitism found in sub-genres of music.

Of course there's the website's bias as well, since the smaller companies invest more than Blizzard on this site for advertising, which is why we've never seen the moderators touch many of the WoW bashing posts.

WoW is a solid game that performs well on most machines, but has much larger proportion of kids, because of it's accessibility and popularity. I think that the moral of the story is that you should always take the ratings on this site with a grain of salt... and some lime.. and cilantro...