high_jeeves - he is so much better than me.

[Dedpoet]

Ded Bob rules!

"Wait for it!"

-Dedpoet

[LordCrush]

Casey,

nice editing /bump

I read the original post, but had no time to reply , then i came back to post a little flame on hai_hai, but the post looked much better now - ROFL

poor hai_hai

[addicted.to.eq]

Excuse me, but....

maybe it's because i am german and i don't understand the sense
in Aaearons reply, but i find it more than ugly to call someone a "Grammar Nazi" and even post the sign.
I feel sad about those people who call other "nazi" without really thinking about the meaning of this word.

As i said above, maybe i did not understand this reply in the right way, so someone can explain it to me?

But if i got it correct, please, stop this bullshit. Maybe it is funny in the United States, but there are other countries with people living in it who don't like this strange kind of humor.

Just my 2 cents.
And i beg your pardon for my bad english.

[Dedpoet]

addicted.to.seq, when aaearon posted that, we were both in the ShowEQ irc channel laughing about this post, and it was a complete joke. It's a pretty common, though I admit not too tasteful thing to call someone a "grammar Nazi" or a "spelling Nazi" on a message board...you see it all the time.

I work for a German company, and of course would never say anything like this at the office :-)

[who_me_use_seq]

You are right though. It is not funny and it is not a good idea to trivialize the term.

[high_jeeves]

I agree, and we have actually gotten into this argument on these boards before.. posting things like that, particularly the flag is a huge trivialization of the suffering of millions of people... if it is funny to you, that worries me.

--Jeeves

[Dedpoet]

Just to clarify, I never said I thought it was funny. We were joking about the thread on irc, I said I was going to make a grammar post, and then the above happened. I don't think calling someone a Nazi is funny, but I was making light of the thread in general. Apologies to anyone I may have offended due to not being clear in my above post.

[GregChant]

The carton is back! Woo Woo Woo

[Raistlin]

<insert thread hijack here>

Mostly to our German friend (but for any of you not familiar with "English" as we Americans tend to use it...)

I'm not sure how it happened (and it hasn't made it into our dictionaries yet) but the word "Nazi" is now synonimous with the words "Anal-Retentive" or "Over Watchful" or even "Protective Of".

Used in a public forum, the word "Nazi" has lost it's entire meaning as someone associated with Hitler's 3rd Rich(sp?) in the WW2 Timeframe.

While yes, using the word "Nazi" to describe someone is completely tasteless if used in the original context (and trivializes the suffering in various ways of thousands upon thousands of both Jewish and German people), in today's world in this context it is simply used to describe someone who is being a bit too anal-retentive (read strict) about a particular subject...thus the descriptive term prior to the term nazi (e.g. "Grammar" nazi, or "Spelling" nazi). Is it a good term to use? Absolutely not. However in a global environment like the internet, there are many people of various ethnicities and backgrounds reading the content, it is important to understand the intent behind the words used, not just the dictionary definition of the words themselves.

Using the word "nazi" to describe someone in a public forum for doing something like correcting someone's spelling (when it is the content that is important) is poking fun at the percieved "corn cob up the ass" view of Hitler's Military during the WWII timeframe. You can see many examples of this kind of portrayal in various popular American made movies.

In a forum setting, the term is used to describe someone who focuses on the details of a post as opposed to the post in general. If I were to post that the answer to life the universe and everything is "Foury-Two" and someone were to post back that I made a spelling error that it should have been "Fourty-Two", it is likely that that person would be referred to as a "spelling" nazi...not because he has connections with the beliefs or ideals of Nazi Germany, but because he focused on a particular mistake made in the message instead of the content of the message itself, even though the content of the message is very clear, even with the spelling mistake.

Generally this kind of comment is posted derogatorially at a person who refutes the facts in a post by picking on the details of spelling or grammer in a futile attempt to show the original poster as stuipd (because their argument is sound) instead of refuting the facts with other contradictory facts. It is also used as a way to show the original poster that his post was not just useless, but unintelligently put together to boot.

To bring this back around, the use in this thread was a play on this play. It was used here to make fun of someone who made fun of someone who's post had absolutely no value to the board. In forum protocol (if there is such a thing) the original message was saying "Not only was your post useless to this board with no redemable value, but it is doubly and tripply useless because you can't even figure out how to use the English language correctly." The second post (The "Nazi" post that offended you and others) was posted as a "good job" to the rebuter in successfully proving just how "Stupid" the original post was. The use of a putdown as a compliment is used fairly often in public forums, particularly by American males, and was what happened here.

I truely do hope that this has been insiteful to our foreign guests on this board as to why this is an accepted practice (though maybe it shouldn't be) on most public forums (not just this one, but almost all others i've ever been on), and to help you better understand the admittedly poor definitions of some of the words in "American English" today.

I am VERY certain that there was no offense intended in these words, nor was there any intent or even thought behind trivializing the events surrounding the true word "Nazi". Today, "Nazi" doesn't mean what it once did. Just like the word "Gay" now refers to someone who is homosexual and not someone who is "Happy".

--Raistlin

[high_jeeves]

I think the picture of the flag is what people find most objectionable... we are mostly aware of the colloquial use of the word... however, a big picture of a nazi flag certain is a bit over the top, and has no place in these forums...

--Jeeves

[compuboy86]

I haven't read the book in awhile but if my memory serves me correctly...

Isn't 42 the meaning of life according to the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Universe???

Just a thought.

Compuboy86

[Dedpoet]

It's the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything, not necessarily the meaning of life. (According to the book, not me :-) )

[Iam_Walrus]

Yes, and the question is "What do you get when you multiply six by nine?"

Of course, that may not make much sense, but Ford and Arthur ran out of Scrabble tiles...

[Gilson]

What really bakes my noodle is that when Arthur finally spells out the question with scrabble tiles, it comes out as "What do you get when you multiply 6 by 9?" Doesn't even equal 42! That was the part that always confused the hell out of me.

[Gilson]

Bah, you smacktard, you beat me to it! :-)