It’s the filter, stupid
Someone is actually working on a stupid filter for email messages, as Josh Quittner writes in this week’s Fortune magazine. This “promises to do to idiotic online comments what a spam filter does to unwanted e-mail: put it in a place where it can’t hurt anyone.”
We all can write stupid sometimes. But irony and sarcasm, not generally considered stupidity, are harder to keep on the right side of the filter. Here’s an intriguing quote from the article, and something to think about if you want not to be seen as stupid.
“…Ortiz, who studied linguistics as an undergrad, recently noticed a pattern in the way some writers use letter repetition. The clueless tend to repeat consonants: ‘This video is amazinggggg!!!’ By comparison, say Ortiz, ‘when you repeat a vowel, you are being sarcastic–’Yeaaaaaah.’”
Visit StupidFilter if you want to help out.