Languagehat: please do it like this.

March 6, 2009 5:59 PM

I beseech languagehat here, publicly: please, my brother, try to be nice?

In this thread, a guy who is an authority on archival storage (sonascope) is in the middle of a fight with languagehat.

I really like lh and look forward to his insights. It makes me feel bad when he presents his point of view in a way that gives the impression he is belittling other members of our community and does not value them as equals. Even if you are smarter than others here, we are all people who want to feel included and respected.

It is a fairly regular occurrence. I won't dig out more examples, anyone who has been around here knows how lh can get when he decides to do that thing he does.

Languagehat, please could you be aware that sometimes your contributions increase the negative energy on the site? Could you try to turn up the volume on the love and peace? If you try to do that it will make me very happy.

posted by Meatbomb to etiquette/policy at 5:59 PM (185 comments total)

Hugs!
posted by TwelveTwo at 6:04 PM on March 6

I think this was already resolved in thread?
posted by mrzarquon at 6:05 PM on March 6

I call it ikkyu2-itis.
posted by fire&wings at 6:07 PM on March 6 [4 favorites]

I dunno. I'm enjoying that thread. It's got all the squawking and umbrage-taking of a David Lodge novel, but without the martinis and infidelity.
posted by BitterOldPunk at 6:08 PM on March 6 [9 favorites]

mrzarquon, it seems you are correct, I must have been viewing a stale version of that thread... nevertheless my larger point, and my general request to languagehat, still stands.
posted by Meatbomb at 6:09 PM on March 6

I hearby commission a dance for LH, compose by you MB, something to soothe the savage beast.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:13 PM on March 6

Oh Noes! Somebody broke one of Grice's Maxims: CALLOUT!!
posted by iamkimiam at 6:28 PM on March 6 [3 favorites]

What is a library?
posted by nola at 6:34 PM on March 6

Here sonascope insulted hats. That's when it got personal.
posted by Floydd at 6:34 PM on March 6

I'm OK with negative energy as long as we avoid antimatter. That stuff's dangerous!
posted by DU at 6:44 PM on March 6

Oh fuck no meatbomb. Piss and vinegar L-hat, or no L-hat is what I say.
posted by vronsky at 6:45 PM on March 6 [2 favorites]

I beseech languagehat here, publicly: please, my brother, try to be nice?

c.f.

Languagehat: stop pooping in the punchbowl.


(i don't have anything against languagehat)
posted by metastability at 6:50 PM on March 6

correction: cf.
posted by metastability at 6:52 PM on March 6

Everybody should just go read that thread rather than goofing around here, because it is fascinating.
posted by LobsterMitten at 7:08 PM on March 6 [2 favorites]

languagefat lol
posted by sneakin at 7:28 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

Mr. Languagehat, it's not about "toes being stepped on" and your withering, dismissive need to demonstrate your presumed higher level of authority by behaving like a petulant holier-than-thou jerk instead of actually discussing an issue without vitriol.

Neeeerrrrddddfiiiiiggghhhtt.
posted by spiderskull at 7:33 PM on March 6

Everybody should just go read that thread rather than goofing around here, because it is fascinating.

The link in that thread's final comment is most interesting.
posted by gman at 7:33 PM on March 6

You know that thing at the bottom of the page that says everybody needs a hug? It's sarcasm.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 7:36 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

I hope
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 7:36 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

Metabomb.
posted by gman at 7:39 PM on March 6

It's not really the trademark Haterade per se--in many threads a well-placed Hat sneer has been far more effective than twenty outraged or merely snarky comments. (E.g.) The problem is really that this approach often personalizes the thread in a way that looks ugly and makes people uncomfortable; in some ways, it's even the overreaction by Hat's victims that does it. I don't think it's a big deal, though, because he's invariably good about apologizing and backing down when he knows he's in the wrong--unlike a number of other posters here, who have done more to poison some discussions than all of Hat's interventions combined.
posted by nasreddin at 7:50 PM on March 6

Excellent use of the languagehat tag.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 8:07 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

I dunno. I'm enjoying that thread. It's got all the squawking and umbrage-taking of a David Lodge novel, but without the martinis and infidelity.

Than ..what's the point?

*swallow*
posted by The Whelk at 8:11 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

I have to say that I thought 'hat had a point: my interpretation of the argument

lhat: 'there's no reason to dismiss Baker as an idiot, he's just wrong about microfilm. People who go 'he's an idiot!' are just people in the profession that are being defensive and overreacting'

sonascope: 'I don't have to make sense, noone here knows what I'm talking about anyway, they should just take my word for it'

lhat: 'that's not the reasoned argument I was looking for'

sonascope: 'I AM NOT DEFENSIVE, YOU JERK'

lhat: 'riiiiiight'

sonascope: 'I am not defensive because he argues against what I do, I'm defensive because my idiot bosses use his argument as a reason to cut my budget without implementing any of his alternatives!'

lhat: 'ah, well that makes your overreaction understandable! Sorry about the idiot bosses'
posted by jacalata at 8:27 PM on March 6 [4 favorites]

Think of the world we would be living in if every dispute were resolved to whatever degree it could be by the exchange of acidic, faux-polite prose.

No, seriously, think of the world we'd be living in. I think I just drooled a little bit. I think possibly we're actually doing okay here.

In conclusion, I don't care what anyone says: "Languagehat: please do it like this" just sounds dirty.
posted by nanojath at 8:37 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

I must say Meatbomb, a callout like yours with so little vitriol is a bit unsettling. Where's the drama? This is just grownups discussing something in a constructive evenhanded way.

LH has a history of using a "I'm the authority and you're stupid" way of making his point.
It's that tone of voice that's unnecessary and, I find, unlikeable.

It doesn't seem that that's covered by Grices maxims though. Still, that was a good joke iamkimiam and also a good point. Even if there's a "you're ok, I'm ok" kind of socio-psychological dictum that proscribes dismissive behaviour people are bound to act dickish on the internet anyway.
That's why I generally end up deleting my opinion comments like this one before I hit "post comment" and just browse somewhere else or close the laptop.
But tonight my insomnia prevents me from such sensible actions: I have nothing better to do.
posted by jouke at 8:38 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

Who the hell argues about archival storage? Oh yeah, this is metafilter.
posted by ornate insect at 8:40 PM on March 6 [16 favorites]

So I guess (deeply ironic) lhat flameout isn't in the offing, then?
posted by cortex at 8:49 PM on March 6

I, too, have some opinions about archival storage, but I'm not sure I could keep up.
posted by cortex at 8:49 PM on March 6

I call it ikkyu2-itis.

until languagehat actually accuses mathowie of essentially aiding and abetting a presumed suicide -- easily among the most breathtakingly vicious and grotesque things anyone has ever said in the 6+ years I've been a member of metafilter -- his occasional prickliness bears no comparison with ikkyu2.
posted by scody at 8:51 PM on March 6 [6 favorites]

I, too, have some opinions about archival storage, but I'm not sure I could back them up.
posted by The Whelk at 8:58 PM on March 6 [33 favorites]

I often have arguments with real life friends about archival storage, only some of whom are also MeFites.
posted by Kattullus at 9:01 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

What a very good thread! As for fights, we can fix it:

*pauses time just as languagehat is getting ready to yell*

*stuffs a chocolate-chip cookie into languagehat's mouth*

*unpauses time*

*watches with delight as languagehat begins yelling*

*OH NO HE CAN'T DO IT he sprays cookie crumbs everywhere instead*
posted by Powerful Religious Baby at 9:05 PM on March 6 [6 favorites]

Perhaps we could use this as an opportunity to talk about more productive and respectful strategies for addressing conflict within the site? I wonder what folks here do when they find themselves getting too upset within a metafilter debate? As someone who is easily sucked into a heated argument about trivialities, I deal with this issue here periodically.
posted by serazin at 9:06 PM on March 6

I've been arguing about archival storage since the early 80s.

The text of these arguments is archived on 5.25" "flippy" discs.
posted by drjimmy11 at 9:07 PM on March 6 [4 favorites]

I store everything on wire recordings.
posted by Astro Zombie at 9:17 PM on March 6

I call it ikkyu2-itis.

Anonymous Internet schmucks can't diagnose ikkyu2-itis, and you're playing a dangerous game pretending you can. He needs to see a real doctor.
posted by grobstein at 9:25 PM on March 6 [28 favorites]

Metafilter really is a huge posse of dorks, isn't it? Where else could I go to find people bitching each other out about Rumi translations and archival storage techniques? I love you all. I can't believe I'm still awake reading this stuff.
posted by selfmedicating at 9:26 PM on March 6 [3 favorites]

I wonder what folks here do when they find themselves getting too upset within a metafilter debate?

I try and keep some part of my brain alert to increases in my blood pressure and/or sense of righteous prickery. If any of those alarms start to go off (and I've had years of [hopefully decreasingly frequent] instances of internet discussion prickery to calibrate these detection systems, so they're pretty decent at this point), I step away from the discussion for a minute, period.

Maybe not permanently, but at least long enough to get some context—which might mean I rant about whatever's bothering me to a friend and let their removed perspective and my own "am I bullshitting my friend to make myself sound better" circuits push back on whatever is spilling out of me.

I might come to the conclusion that I'm pretty much in the right, hot under the collar or not, in which case I'll usually try to cool down and then go back to it. Or I might find that while I've got something worth saying, I'm not really doing a good job of saying it, in which case it's a matter of either getting right about how I'm going about arguing and re-engaging, or acknowledging that it's not something I'm gonna be able to argue well and just bowing out.

And sometimes I come to the conclusion that there's no way I can keep up an argument without likely being shitty about it or just getting riled up emotionally by it in any case. And those I just write off and don't go back to; they don't make me happy, they don't make anyone else's day better either. Nothing going for it but adrenaline.

The hard parts are being honest with myself about when something is getting out of hand, and being good about really dropping the stuff than needs to be dropped. I figure that's probably the case for most people, too.
posted by cortex at 9:28 PM on March 6 [8 favorites]

That's total bullshit Cortex and you know it, god damn it.

Wait. (Rereads)

Sorry. Actually, you make a lot of sense.
posted by Astro Zombie at 9:31 PM on March 6

HUG IN A FIRE, ASTRO FRIENDBIE
posted by cortex at 9:32 PM on March 6 [2 favorites]

What is a library?

These days we spell that "liberry".
posted by YoBananaBoy at 10:04 PM on March 6

I like a bit of robust debate myself. LH might go in guns blazing at times but he'll stick around and argue honestly. Nothing for a grown-up to be afraid of.
posted by Abiezer at 10:07 PM on March 6

Perhaps we could use this as an opportunity to talk about more productive and respectful strategies for addressing conflict within the site?

Be Jessamyn with a heavy dose of cortex.

That sounds trite, but I'm serious. Jessamyn has a knack for saying the right thing to pour oil on the troubled waters, with a bit of (slightly self-mocking) humour. cortex has a similar knack: saying the right snarky thing in a way that is impossible to take offence at. Better: both have the ability to prick the inflating balloon of bullshittery without anyone complaining about the sting. It's honestly rather breathtaking to see.
posted by dirtynumbangelboy at 10:11 PM on March 6 [7 favorites]

I used to have strong opinions about archival storage, but I've since shelved them.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:14 PM on March 6 [7 favorites]

I gotta go with Meatbomb on this one. Although it might just be a clever form of mind control.
posted by doctor_negative at 10:17 PM on March 6

In response to jacalata, I'd have to ask where it was that LH made this rational proposal that I was supposed to argue with. His first toe in the water in the discussion was to lecture me about discourse in what is, by all appearances, a casual place to discuss ideas on a level that's not rigidly academic, using language that put words in my mouth and argued against points I did not make.

A troll's a troll, and I've known 'em all, way back to when I was rotary dialing BBS systems running on Ohio Scientific Challengers and had to clap the phone handset into rubber cups to verrrry slowwwly read the tiresome prose of people who enjoy nothing more than stirring the pot. It's exhausting, and why I'm not going to bother writing any more on the subject of archives, even though it's a career field I spent most of my life in and still follow with great interest. Why should I waste the time fighting off trolls who sit on the sidelines until they feel like jumping in with some obnoxious little diatribe that's got nothing to do with the topic at hand?

For the record, I never said that Baker's an "idiot," just that he's unqualified in the field. "Idiot" is a value judgement I don't make, whereas "unqualified" is based on credentials and experience, pure and simple. Had anyone actually asked me to expand on or justify what was an off-handed remark on Baker, in response to an earlier comment, I'd have been more than happy to do it, but LH never bothered with asking a question. The text is all right there, and it's pretty clear what it is.

It's ironic, really, since my first encounter with LH online revolved around his snarky dismissal of amateur (or not up to his standards) translators of the Tao Te Ching (and Rumi) as worthless, and suddenly he's the staunch defender of the passionate amateur in Baker. Apparently passionate amateurs only count when they're backing up his opinions.
posted by sonascope at 10:40 PM on March 6 [7 favorites]

Baker is still my favourite Dr Who.
posted by UbuRoivas at 11:00 PM on March 6 [6 favorites]

For me it's Eccleston but then I was only really introduced to Doctor Who after the relaunch. I have seen all of two episodes of old Doctor Who (I think, my memory is hazy on this but I seem to remember a strange man wandering about a quarry in Walse). I am therefore completely unqualified to say that I think Eccleston is the best Doctor, but yet here I am, saying that.

What are you gonna do about it, Ubu? Or should I call you... Roivas?
posted by Kattullus at 11:04 PM on March 6

sonascope, I for one know enough about archives to really appreciate your articulate and knowledgeable contributions to that thread (one of my first jobs was rejacketing 19th century glass negatives in an archive, many years ago now), and I will really regret it if you bow out. Also echoing others here who hope that this thread leads people to read that one, as there is some really good info. there, and yours and others comments about microfilm and digital preservation are really useful to have out there.
posted by gudrun at 11:27 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

sonascope pretty much shot down languagehat but good:

"Thank goodness the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and the Walters Art Museum were all dumb enough to fall for my 'rants' for all those years I spent in preservation microfilming/scanning. Thanks ever so much for schooling my sorry self on what I'm doing wrong, so that I can strive to be a perfect being like you, O Great Wise One."

Not sure why it had to go to meta. And not sure why languagehat has an axe to grind against sonascope, beyond the fact that he's a bigger fish in one of the fields that languagehat likes to claim sole executive authority over.
posted by bardic at 11:47 PM on March 6 [1 favorite]

I also would have missed that thread if not for this one, and I would have been poorer for it.
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 11:48 PM on March 6 [3 favorites]

So many different groups think that they own Rumi. The Persians since he spoke their language (albeit in a much different form than modern day Farsi), The Turks because he settled in Konya (may Ataturk burn in hell for supressing Sufis there); The Afghans because he was born in Balkh (though they didn't speak Peshtun there then); the modern revisionist syncretist hippies who've made a name for themselves with very loose translations (though he was always a Muslim scholar even during his time spent with Shams al Tabriz), certainly not least the modern day Mevlevi order that bears his namesake (though they've become by and large a defunct tariqa that put on nice dance shows--it's really easy to whirl like that with a bit of training and dedication). So, who owns Rumi?
posted by Burhanistan at 12:10 AM on March 7 [3 favorites]

languagehat "likes to claim sole executive authority" over what now, bardic? After stating explicitly that he didn't claim greater authority, languagehat apologized in the thread and withdrew his snark. Now it looks as if you, bardic, among others, are attempting to goad languagehat into responding irately for no reason—except possibly the entertainment of a flameout (hi, cortex!).
posted by cgc373 at 1:04 AM on March 7

Baker has some pretty interesting things to say about nail clippers.
posted by turgid dahlia at 1:05 AM on March 7 [1 favorite]

Is this the thread where I can take off my pants? No? Good.

*takes off pants*
posted by loquacious at 1:07 AM on March 7 [1 favorite]

Burhanistan: did i ever mention that i specifically travelled to Konya to visit Rumi's mausoleum?
posted by UbuRoivas at 1:15 AM on March 7

(and ditto Tabriz because that's where Shems came from)
posted by UbuRoivas at 1:17 AM on March 7

"Now it looks as if you, bardic, among others, are attempting to goad languagehat into responding irately for no reason"

I'd love to see him flame-out, if only because he's so vocal about his desire for others to do the same.

But he's a pretty smart guy, so I doubt it'll happen.
posted by bardic at 1:25 AM on March 7

His first toe in the water in the discussion was to lecture me about discourse in what is, by all appearances, a casual place to discuss ideas on a level that's not rigidly academic, using language that put words in my mouth and argued against points I did not make.

Perhaps I approach mefi differently to you. I have no chance of ever gaining academic status in even a tiny proportion of those fields that I am interested in knowing about, and mefi is a place I come to find (and where possible, join) intelligent, reasoned discussion of those fields. I don't understand why anyone would bother making a comment in a forum where they felt it wasn't worth backing it up because nobody else was on their level anyway.


'Idiot' was a lazy summary of 'person who doesn't know what he's talking about and attempts to make authoritative pronouncements anyway'. Perhaps it's a word I use too easily.
posted by jacalata at 2:34 AM on March 7 [2 favorites]

Sonascope, I hope you continue commenting on archiving threads. I learned a lot from what you had to say, even about the Baker "derail".
posted by BrotherCaine at 3:31 AM on March 7 [2 favorites]

I'll stand up for languagehat here. Meatbomb, please knock it off. Thanks.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:41 AM on March 7

as valuable as el sprachchapeau is, i - for one - always appreciate to the depths of the vastest ocean when somebody who is a freaking expert on a topic (any topic) takes the time to talk about it to those of us who mightn't have ever passed by their field.

so, i'd like to thank sonascope for their comments that taught me a bit about a field i never really knew much about.
posted by UbuRoivas at 3:57 AM on March 7 [1 favorite]

Languagehat's keen insight into a wealth of topics, combined with his get off my fucking lawn persona make him one of my favorite members of the site.

I hope that no one flames out over this. However, languagehat, if you were to flame out, would you please use at least one truly filthy expletive from each language that you know? Thanks.
posted by SteveTheRed at 4:01 AM on March 7 [1 favorite]

Va' fa' un culo.
posted by UbuRoivas at 4:03 AM on March 7

I'll stand up for languagehat here. Meatbomb, please knock it off. Thanks.

Stop asking people to be nice? I don't understand BP. This isn't a referendum on languagehat, I think we all agree he is excellent. I will also stand up for him, right alongside you brother.
posted by Meatbomb at 4:19 AM on March 7

*joins loquacious in pantlessness*
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 4:25 AM on March 7

this thread is useless without photos.
posted by UbuRoivas at 4:31 AM on March 7

Stop asking people to be nice?

No, please stop being condescending to languagehat. If you have a personal issue with him, you could just send him an email. By dragging this call-out into the public, you're putting him on the spot for the sake of putting him on the spot. That's wrong. Just knock it off.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 4:32 AM on March 7

Languagehat handed me my ass in a classical music thread when I joined here. He was tetchy but not insulting and I learned a lot from the exchange so, go languagehat I guess.
posted by minifigs at 4:44 AM on March 7

languagehat: Sconascope, I am your father! Accept mah authoritah.

sonascope: No! You killed my father, Obi Wan Kenobi told me.

languagehat: Obi Wan didn't know what he was talking about.

sonascope: You will never be my father!

languagehat: I am your father and I would appreciate you not disagreeing with me.

...and so on....
posted by mrmojoflying at 4:45 AM on March 7

Ubu: no, but mabruk on your visit there! Konya is on my dance card and I hope to visit there sooner than later, insha'allah.
posted by Burhanistan at 4:48 AM on March 7

I feel rather sheepish about having brought up Baker in the first place in that thread. But even though things went rapidly off (for a while, certainly), it's also brought out a lot of passion and expertise, from which I've learnt a considerable amount. This is a vital conversation to be having and it's inevitable that feelings run high. We are, after all, talking about cultural memory. So, sorry if mentioning NB raised the temperature. but I don't think it was a bad thing in the end. Now, I must finally read this response to Baker, which has been sitting on my shelf for a while now.
posted by GeorgeBickham at 4:56 AM on March 7

Languagehat handed me my ass in a classical music thread when I joined here.

He once tried to give me a hard time for complaining about how I wasn't interested in one of the offspring of Winston S. Churchill, lecturing me about I shouldn't snark on her simply because she was some ugly-ass boho aristo.

I think I struggled to take his complaint seriously. I can get all old-man-moany when the mood takes me as well.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 5:59 AM on March 7

*rubs eyes sleepily*

Uh, what's going on here?

*reads*

Hm. Well, while I tend to agree with BP that an e-mail would have been better suited to the occasion, I must say that as callouts go this is a pretty civilized one, which means I don't get to flame out in that glorious way we've all been looking forward to. Meatbomb, my man, I appreciate your desire for universal harmony, and while I will never be able to live up to it fully, I will try not to snark more heavily than the occasion warrants. But there are certain subjects that are catnip to my snark generator: prescriptivists whining about failure to follow the "rules of English" they dream up, atheists frothing at the mouth about religion, and librarians complaining about Nicholson Baker are among them. However, I had not realized that Baker's work was affecting their professional lives in the way sonascope described—I had thought it was just wounded feelings and wagon-circling. I thank sonascope for enlightening me, and will try to bear that in mind in the future.

sonascope: I'm sorry you reacted so badly to what was pretty innocuous MeFi back-and-forth. If you want, I can send you links to some real flame wars so you can see the difference. At any rate, you misunderstood: I was not attacking you personally and have nothing but respect for your profession, and I look forward to learning from you the way I've learned from so many specialists here. I was, as I say, simply mocking what I perceived as knee-jerk anti-Bakerism (which, believe me, I've seen and heard a lot of from people in the field), and once you explained yourself more fully I backed off. I hope you won't take our little spat to heart, and I hope even more strongly that you won't refrain from talking about your field, because it's an important one and I'd like to find out more about it. Peace?

And thanks for the cookie, Powerful Religious Baby!

*takes off pants, chants Rumi*

زاهد بودم ترانه گویم کردی سر حلقۀ بزم و باده جویم کردی
سجاده نشین با وقاری بودم بازیچۀ کودکان کویم کردی
posted by languagehat at 6:02 AM on March 7 [5 favorites]

LANGUAGEHAT CALLED ME AN "OSTENTATIOUS NINCOMPOOP." WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?
posted by lukemeister at 6:03 AM on March 7

Also: I never had any pants on to begin with.
posted by PeterMcDermott at 6:05 AM on March 7

This is the first callout I've ever seen where all the parties involved actually turned up. Meatbomb deserves some kudos for that. Those must have been some beautiful invitations - I'm guessing embossed, gilt-edged, thick as the family bible. And you see that colouring? That's bone.
posted by WPW at 6:25 AM on March 7

From the thread: what is, essentially, a bulletin board for those of us who like to explore a diversity of subjects without having to have post-doctoral degrees in those subjects

Wait, so I can scrap my post-doc in LOLCats? Phew.That's gonna free up a nice big chunk of time.

This is a good point though. A lot of times people go to one-up in the "I'm a bigger expert than you!" category and in these situations, we almost always end up bowing to the 'hat, because his hats are weightier than all our hats combined.

While an informed opinion is better than half the crap that comes spewing out of my own piehole, an informed or even "expert" opinion doesn't necessarily mean you're right. It's always frustrating to me to see conversations between experts come down to an experience-showdown rather than actually debating the facts. sonoscope was definitely guilty of this in the thread by name dropping the institutions he's worked for when facing off over languagehat's presumed authority. That's the kind of crap that makes it personal rather than just cutting to the chase and saying "Well, I don't like this guy because his ideas have been used by Satan to make babies cry."

Now that I've used someone's quote from MeFi to then make a point against him, I'm going to go lie down and hope that the computer stops spinning.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 6:28 AM on March 7

I agree with Meatbomb's assessment.

Χριστός, what a fundament!
posted by applemeat at 6:35 AM on March 7 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: an informed or "expert" opinion doesn't necessarily mean you're right.
posted by WPW at 6:35 AM on March 7

If anyone ever wants to call me out, could you please route it through Meatbomb?

As per languagehat, whenever he's pounding someone I disagree with, I'm all like go, hat, go!, and whenever I think the other person is okay, I think, why languagefat has to be so mean? So, to sum up, Meatbomb makes pretty friendly callouts; languagehat rules; except when he sucks; some people in this thread are feeling pretty drafty downstairs. First person to register "languagepants" gets a questionable lollipop.
posted by taz at 7:07 AM on March 7 [2 favorites]

Wow. That was an awesomely non-apologetic apology, languagehat.

If it matters at all, and I'm not sure that it should, there is now one more person on the planet who thinks you're kind of a jerk. For what that's worth.
posted by ook at 7:17 AM on March 7 [4 favorites]

How excellent! Thank you for your tact and grace in responding to this callout, languagehat. Here is a summary of what we have all learned here today:

• Peace and love always win;
• The tally of "anti-lh" vs. "pro-lh" votes is 11 to 3, which fully vindicates me in my good and righteous decision to start this thread, and as an added bonus humbles and shames my bitter enemy Blazecock Pileon;
• Tom Baker was the best Dr. Who;
• languagehat knows more about classical music than minifig;
• There is a large minority of MeFi users with an interest in Mawlānā Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī (مولانا جلال الدین محمد بلخى), also known as Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī (جلال‌الدین محمد رومی), but known to the English-speaking world simply as Rumi, a 13th-century Persian poet, Sunni Islamic jurist, and theologian;
• And, finally, that regardless of the political, educational, and class differences that divide us and set us one against the other, as MetaFilteris we can all join together in our shared love of a healthy and respectful debate about archival storage methodologies and techniques.

posted by Meatbomb at 7:18 AM on March 7 [14 favorites]

It's always frustrating to me to see conversations between experts come down to an experience-showdown rather than actually debating the facts. sonoscope was definitely guilty of this in the thread by name dropping the institutions he's worked for when facing off over languagehat's presumed authority.

Yes, and the irony about this expertise-showdown is that Baker's book Double Fold, and some of his other writing, make a highly convincing argument that part of what went so catastrophically wrong was due to the fact that the people involved were, in a sense, too expert - too embedded in the contexts and values of their institutions to see what was so crazy about what they were doing. I love that there's so much expertise on Metafilter, but it can distort people's perspectives significantly, alsoi, and there's plenty of evidence that this happened in the case of microfilm.
posted by game warden to the events rhino at 7:22 AM on March 7 [1 favorite]

The tally of "anti-lh" vs. "pro-lh" votes is 11 to 3, which fully vindicates me in my good and righteous decision to start this thread, and as an added bonus humbles and shames my bitter enemy Blazecock Pileon

What a jerk. Go away.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 7:22 AM on March 7

And, finally, that regardless of the political, educational, and class differences that divide us and set us one against the other, as MetaFilteris we can all join together in our shared love of a healthy and respectful debate about archival storage methodologies and techniques.
Oh no. There can only be war, endless war, bitter and pitiless until I stand alone amid the smoking ruins and shattered corpses, master at last of the Internets, that most vital and serious of all battle-fronts.
posted by Abiezer at 7:32 AM on March 7 [3 favorites]

We're supposed to be wearing pants?
posted by P.o.B. at 7:35 AM on March 7

Don't you mean pantaloons?


Can we please not indulge in any more of this LOLHAT foolishness?
posted by Kirth Gerson at 7:37 AM on March 7

Does that included LOLFEDORAS? Because I'm not sure the site will survive without that.
posted by jacalata at 7:42 AM on March 7

Wow. That was an awesomely non-apologetic apology, languagehat.

I don't think I have anything to apologize for. When I think it's called for, I apologize.

If it matters at all, and I'm not sure that it should, there is now one more person on the planet who thinks you're kind of a jerk. For what that's worth.

The feeling is mutual.
posted by languagehat at 7:50 AM on March 7

Fair enough.
posted by ook at 7:55 AM on March 7

It's inevitable; once guys' pants start hitting the floor, the jerks start up..
posted by yhbc at 7:55 AM on March 7 [2 favorites]

Just in case it is not clear, the second bullet was intended in a spirit of playful fun. See, the joke is that after saying that peace and love wins, I then go into great detail about besting my supposed Internet enemies.

Ha ha? No?

And I did not take a tally, the 11 to 3 numbers were pulled straight out of my ass.
posted by Meatbomb at 8:11 AM on March 7

So I tried this http://translation.babylon.com/Arabic

To see what languagehat's signature meant:

زاهد بودم ترانه گویم کردی سر حلقۀ بزم و باده جویم کردی
سجاده نشین با وقاری بودم بازیچۀ کودکان کویم کردی

It came back as:

The (boudm) ascetic Tarana (0oueem) (8rdee) the secret in a spearhead and perished (joueem) (8rdee) . Carpet starched in O and bitumen (boudm) (bazeechgh) (8oud8an) (8oueem) (8rdee) .


It is all so clear now. I'm clearly wearing the wrong hat.
posted by DreamerFi at 8:13 AM on March 7

The (boudm) ascetic Tarana (0oueem) (8rdee) the secret in a spearhead and perished (joueem) (8rdee) . Carpet starched in O and bitumen (boudm) (bazeechgh) (8oud8an) (8oueem) (8rdee) .


That's some typical knee-jerk wagon-circling right there.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 8:27 AM on March 7 [4 favorites]

That is funny. I typed in "крякозя́бры" and it came back as "文字化け". Must be something wrong with the character encoding.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:32 AM on March 7 [1 favorite]

I just want to say that I highly value languagehat's contributions to this site.
posted by grouse at 9:32 AM on March 7

so was this why ikkyu2's account is disabled or he decide to take a break?
posted by cjorgensen at 9:33 AM on March 7

cjorgensen: keep reading that thread. You'll see ikkyu2's farewell comment.
posted by grouse at 9:35 AM on March 7

as MetaFilteris we can all join together in our shared love of a healthy and respectful debate about archival storage methodologies and techniques

La-la-la-la!
posted by soundofsuburbia at 9:39 AM on March 7

I'm not sure why anyone would want to try and lay claim to being the biggest fish in any field, to be honest. You're still both going to end up gasping and flapping your tail forlornly on the grass as you perish, waiting for the crows to stop circling and come and peck out your juicy eyes.
posted by Brockles at 9:39 AM on March 7 [3 favorites]

there are certain subjects that are catnip to my snark generator: prescriptivists whining about failure to follow the "rules of English" they dream up

Heh. My first real foray into the MeFi waters was as a "prescriptivist" arguing with languagehat. Well, not a prescriptivist, really, but just taking a not-completely-descriptivist standpoint. Being pretty new to internet-debating, I'm pretty sure I did a piss poor job of explaining myself, but all I was trying to say was that language must evolve, but that as long as there exist perceived rules for how "educated" people speak, it would behoove people who wish to succeed in their culture to learn them. I know that for at least a year or so afterwards, whenever I saw languagehat in any of the threads, my first thought would be, "Wow, what a dick!"

Having now spent - god, is it not even three whole years? - here, I know that 1.) languagehat was being totally tame with me, really; 2.) he is something of an expert in many fields, which is of course always useful around here; 3.) arguing with him, because he can do it so well, makes one's own arguments clearer, which is double-good, and 4.) yeah, lh, you can still be kind of a dick sometimes, but so can we all.

So I'm not shitting on the call-out - which Meatbomb did civilly and politely - but just saying that, once I got a feel for this place, I came around to languagehat, and love his contributions here.

(My god, though, really? Not even three years? That feels like a lifetime ago. Was I born again in the eyes of mathowie upon paying my five dollars?)
posted by Navelgazer at 9:50 AM on March 7 [2 favorites]

Agree with Navelgazer's #3, especially.

And I've lost track - are we still wearing pants, or not?
posted by rtha at 10:01 AM on March 7

Man, I misread Brockles' comment as COWS pecking out the eyes of fish, and that was kind of an awesome visual.

Crows is just so... pedestrian. It's been done.

(Also: I'm wearing pants, but I've always been kind of counter-cultural.)
posted by grapefruitmoon at 10:15 AM on March 7

It's amazing how illiad's fan base is so quick to jump to his defense, and even try to blame the people who exposed his douchehattery, when the evidence clearly shows that he was out of line. That said, he seems like a decent enough guy who had a lapse in judgment. Hopefully he'll learn from it going forward...

Oh, wait. Wrong thread.
posted by Balonious Assault at 10:34 AM on March 7

I too have crossed blades with the one you know as languagehat - that cursed mongrel, that dog of malice! It was in a little town in Nuevo Leon, where the dry smell of poverty assaults the nostrils, and the only bar seethes continually with frustration and violence. Our enmity was renowed and fabled for its passion. I remember the women and children who shielded their eyes or covered their mouths, horrified, as we drew our knives in that humid saloon bar - my stiletto glistened like a living thing, a steel fang hungry for the blood of my enemy; and his rough gaucho blade was not yet clean of his last victim - whose guts he had punctured for some miniscule act of disrespect. We circled each other in a silence punctuated only by the dim, bleak cry of a dying buzzard, miles away ... our eyes narrowed - our lean muscles pulsed with hatred. Suddenly our blades swang and hang on I'm actually getting pretty hot writing this. Gimme five minutes to jerk off and I'll be back in a second.
posted by the quidnunc kid at 10:36 AM on March 7 [22 favorites]

swang? swang???
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 11:11 AM on March 7 [2 favorites]

i own rumi. on display 14mar-19apr. in my bathroom.
posted by CitizenD at 11:20 AM on March 7

It helps with the nuance to read languagehat's posts in this man's voice.
posted by Rumple at 11:24 AM on March 7

Please don't read mystical poetry in the shitter. Thanks.
posted by Burhanistan at 11:26 AM on March 7 [2 favorites]

This thread is now redirected to the topic: portraits of languagehat.
posted by Rumple at 11:26 AM on March 7

Ah, Burhanistan, but when the sublunar world is as gross and defiled as it is, cannot we suppose all of its myriad locales to be equally in some fashion "the shitter"? and thus, can we ever read mystical poetry?
posted by cgc373 at 11:35 AM on March 7 [2 favorites]

Worse luck, I meant to write sublunary there. The world's so rotten it can't even spell, not even with me in in't and watchful.
posted by cgc373 at 11:41 AM on March 7

in in't? It's frickin' time to sleep.
posted by cgc373 at 11:45 AM on March 7

ceege, that's what wudhu is for.
posted by Burhanistan at 12:15 PM on March 7

(Also, Earth isn't "sublunar", I reckon, since the moon orbits it. Earth, then, is "subsolar".)
posted by Burhanistan at 12:17 PM on March 7

Gimme five minutes to jerk off and I'll be back in a second.

Um, could you please just come back in five minutes?
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 12:32 PM on March 7 [5 favorites]

Better yet, have a smoke and take a shower before you come back.
posted by netbros at 12:34 PM on March 7

"I'm sorry you reacted so badly"

I am so stealing this for my next argument.
posted by HopperFan at 1:12 PM on March 7 [7 favorites]

i like reading mystical shit into poetry.
posted by UbuRoivas at 1:14 PM on March 7 [1 favorite]

Curse you, the quidnunc kid, when you escaped my vengeance that day, I asked Uncle Joe Grandi to "take care of you," and he sent his finest men on your trail, but here you are again, taunting me. We will meet again, and you will not escape so easily!

And damn, I just realized I could have used the perfect movie quote in this thread: "Unpleasant? Strange. I've been told I have a very winning personality."
posted by languagehat at 3:00 PM on March 7

Gimme five minutes to jerk off and I'll be back in a second.

Too good to do it here on the Grey like the rest of us, hunh, Sir Hoity-Toit?
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 3:20 PM on March 7 [1 favorite]

This thread is now redirected to the topic: portraits of languagehat.

another
posted by generalist at 3:23 PM on March 7

Languagehat was frankly kind of being a dick.

Sorry to drop the final judgment on this, LH, because I like and respect you, but as for being a dick, at least it takes one to know one. :(
posted by Optimus Chyme at 3:25 PM on March 7

but as for being a dick, at least it takes one to know one

"That's why they lose very few players."
posted by Sys Rq at 3:39 PM on March 7 [1 favorite]

Lost me at "swang".
posted by mr_crash_davis mark II: Jazz Odyssey at 3:54 PM on March 7

I've never been a fan of the "I know stuff, now I get to be an obnoxious little bitch!" type of people. But perhaps that's the reaction of a know-nothing.
posted by fleacircus at 4:15 PM on March 7

It is all so clear now. I'm clearly wearing the wrong hat.

I was going to snark that you should have used translation.babylon.com/persian, but that only yielded:
I say hermit songs you حلقۀ a feast and wine seek rug Kurdish areas with Vaghari بازیچۀ children’s wouldn’t I?

So maybe the answer is don't use Babylon.com for your Rumi translations? I understand Barks is not recommended either though, which kind of brings us back to sonascope v. languagehat round 1...
posted by BinGregory at 5:30 PM on March 7

I'm kind of sorry I missed being around in that thread, and kind of not sorry. I agree that the mantle of expert can cloud the soundness of an argument, and that the thinking within a single field can be very wrong even when very talented people are doing it - shared underlying assumptions being what they are. I know a few things about the problems of archival storage as well, and have always had the same difficulty with many librarians that many curators do, because of the destruction of material culture that is still stable. There is a lot of validity to the view that stable artifacts should not be destroyed before they are materially threatened, whether or not we're talking about books alone and whether or not Baker's book is involved, and the question of what are the acceptable qualities to be sacrificed when preserving material, and when, is a reasonable one to ask. Because the idea that information is primary is foundational in the field of library and archives, and the idea that ideas and information are contained in objects is primary in fields that deal in material culture, there is a fundamental conflict here that is genuinely difficult to resolve. The thing is, it never will be satisfactorily resolved with an earnest willingness to talk about it - and I agree with languagehat that often it's very, very difficult to arrive at that earnest willingness, for reasons that are practical and personal (this is my job! We're doing the best we can! We have to make choices! I don't have enough resources!) but rarely stated upfront.

Also, it's a good thing no one waited for expert burglars to report on Watergate, nor expert meat-packers to write The Jungle or Fast Food Nation, nor expert psychiatrists to write Ten Days in a Mad-House, nor expert war planners to write about My Lai. Outsiders can be both excellent reporters of fact and represent laypeople. When they do, and when they get notice and create public interest, the subjects of the investigation get a startlingly good opportunity to educate the world on the problems of their work and the assumptions of their field. It was largely because the library community responded so amazingly poorly when it came out that Baker's work is seen as so destructive. Assumptions in archival work really do startle laypeople; most can begin to understand and often accept complexities when they're educated about them, but not when the response is defensive and angry.

Anyway, I didn't need another cranky argument this week, so better that this went down without me.
posted by Miko at 5:33 PM on March 7 [4 favorites]

will be satisfactorily resolved with an earnest willingness to talk about it -

make that ....withOUT an earnest willingness....
posted by Miko at 5:34 PM on March 7

languagehat apologized in the thread

Point of clarification: no, he didn't.

*waves to fellow i'm-an-unnecessary-dick-sometimes member*
posted by mediareport at 5:52 PM on March 7

You said "member".
posted by Burhanistan at 7:37 PM on March 7

I love that there's so much expertise on Metafilter, but it can distort people's perspectives significantly. . .and there's plenty of evidence that this happened in the case of microfilm.

"A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So is a lot."

I tried to work that quote into epic snark but I've got nothing.
posted by MLIS at 7:58 PM on March 7

Miko, if you read Richard Cox's response to Nicholson Baker, Cox makes very clear the distinction between librarians and archivists. Librarians value access; archivists value preservation. This distinction was also brought up in jb's excellent comments in the original thread. The reason I bring up this distinction is that it influences decisions made regarding preservation of original materials. Part of the defensiveness of librarians then comes because they are being told they are not doing their jobs for not doing something that was not part of their job description to begin with. I agree both librarians and archivists have done a poor job of educating the public with respect to their roles in preserving material culture.
posted by needled at 8:51 PM on March 7

Wait a minute, wait a minute.

Languagehat gets his own fucking tag?!?
posted by yhbc at 9:04 PM on March 7

Languagehat gets his own fucking tag?!?

Relax, relax. It's strictly descriptivist.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 9:23 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]

It's one of the oldest tags in the Indo-European language. Most of us could have metatalked with Stone Age people.
posted by Dumsnill at 9:36 PM on March 7 [1 favorite]

but a language hat was what stoneage shamen used to don when speaking in tongues.

hence: The (boudm) ascetic Tarana (0oueem) (8rdee) the secret in a spearhead and perished (joueem) (8rdee) . Carpet starched in O and bitumen (boudm) (bazeechgh) (8oud8an) (8oueem) (8rdee) .
posted by UbuRoivas at 10:09 PM on March 7

Plural of shaman is shamans, not shamen. prescriptivism is fun
posted by Rumple at 10:49 PM on March 7 [1 favorite]

Actually, these days it's "shapeople".
posted by flapjax at midnite at 11:00 PM on March 7 [3 favorites]

Actually, Ubu was just talking about stone age Scottish techno bands.
posted by Kattullus at 11:03 PM on March 7 [1 favorite]

and if anybody knows how to speak in tongues, it's the scottish.
posted by UbuRoivas at 11:51 PM on March 7

The early analyses that claimed Queen Mefititi popularized the Languagehat tag¹ have been refuted by more thorough study.² It's now generally accepted that the tag did not come into use until the reign of Tutankaskme,³ and was frequently criticized even then.<sup>4


1</sup>Some guy everybody used to think was cool, in a book he cobbled together using his blog posts.
²A bunch of other guys who claim that guy¹ plagiarized their comments on an obscure community forum.
³Dangerous Advice For Free, v. 1, 2, and 5.
⁴Inside Meta, all issues.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 4:03 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

Queen Mefititi popularized the Languagehat tag glyph.

Speaking of which, here are some more images of the 'hat.
posted by UbuRoivas at 4:20 AM on March 8

No, no, these days it's "persons of sha."
posted by languagehat at 9:48 AM on March 8 [1 favorite]

We would also have accepted "shamyn".
posted by cortex at 9:53 AM on March 8 [3 favorites]

It's one of the oldest tags in the Indo-European language. Most of us could have metatalked with Stone Age people.

Oh, man, don't go there. You want to get L-Hat going proto-IndoEuropean on your ass, start waxing Nostratic. Oh, the outrage.... It'd be like putting habanero sauce in his bombasts.
posted by y2karl at 9:53 AM on March 8

Inside Meta, all issues.

Not to be confused with the notorious pictorial periodical Deep Inside MeTa, which featured the legendary Girth Kerson. Whatever happened to that guy?
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:09 AM on March 8

Tragic hot tub incident.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 3:37 PM on March 8

Coincidentally and/or ironically, language log posted this today.
posted by serazin at 8:48 PM on March 8 [1 favorite]

§
posted by desuetude at 9:03 PM on March 8

I used to have strong opinions about archival storage, but I can't seem to find them right now ...

Can someone explain to my fellow train passengers why I'm not wearing pants? They don't seem to accept "because I'm on MetaTalk" as a valid reason.
posted by dg at 2:09 AM on March 9

just tell them that MetaTalk is a new psychiatric drug that they're trialling.
posted by UbuRoivas at 2:30 AM on March 9 [1 favorite]

..."Mist is when the sky is tired of flight
and rests its soft machine on ground:

then the world is dim and bookish
like engravings under tissue paper..."

-from "A Martian Sends A Postcard Home" (raine)
posted by clavdivs at 8:05 AM on March 9

Another portrait of languagehat sort of a self link
posted by minifigs at 8:07 AM on March 9

Languagehat flaming out
posted by TedW at 10:04 AM on March 9

Another portrait of languagehat sort of a self link

Wow, that was terrific! Congratulations on whatever you had to do with it.

Languagehat flaming out

When the time comes, I will change my userpage image to that.
posted by languagehat at 11:17 AM on March 9

When the time comes, I will change my userpage image to that.

I see no "if" in that statement. Is it a certainty? Do you know when? I have no desire to see you go, but if it's inevitable, I'd at least like to be there.
posted by SpiffyRob at 2:21 PM on March 9

It's in his will. If he hasn't flamed out by the time he shuffles of this mortal cuil, the "I" in "I will change my userpage" will actually be whoever has power of attorney.
posted by cortex at 2:41 PM on March 9

I have it on good authority that a great number of 10000 word comments have been stored by languagehat in case of his death so that he can have a proper viking afterlife right here on the gray, wading into battle slinging flame from side to side at all and sundry. His wrath will wither the strongest typing arm, his scorn will sow salt in the fertilest comment fields and his biting wit will cleave asunder even the stoutest of snarkmongers. Look upon your flame outs ye angry, and despair. Nothing will measure up besides that colossal trainwreck. That lone and crazy thread will stretch far down the screen.
posted by Kattullus at 2:54 PM on March 9 [4 favorites]

wading into battle slinging flame from side to side at all and sundry

Wouldn't the watery nature of this battle put the flames out?

Or is he wading into a proper Norse peat bog?
posted by UbuRoivas at 3:22 PM on March 9

Peat Bog, isn't he that guy used to drum for the Beatles?
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:45 PM on March 9 [1 favorite]

The Who's on first.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 4:46 PM on March 9

Peat Bog, isn't he that guy used to drum for the Beatles?

yeah, until he went out in flames, in a bizarre pyrotechnics accident onstage.
posted by UbuRoivas at 4:53 PM on March 9

All hail! The Behatted Wild Man of Greenfield.
posted by tellurian at 8:32 PM on March 9

It's weird to see your own personal injokes being referenced on MetaFilter. Of course, that's what happens when you marry a MeFite. But man. The Behatted Wild Man of Greenfield! I remember driving down I-91 with Kattullus going past the Greenfield exit, saying "Oooh, here's Greenfield, better check to see if The Behatted Wild Man is lurking in the bushes!" Or maybe I called him languagehat and he changed it to the Behatted Wild Man, I don't know. But it was totally a conversation we had in the car. And then he posted it here. And now, here I am, feeling like I'm on acid or something.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 4:07 AM on March 10

Of course, that's what happens when you marry a MeFite.

the other thing i could imagine is that injokes get carried across from the site into your personal life.

why, just now, i used the "you know who else (etc)" formulation elsewhere, but i felt i had to explain that "who else" was actually hitler.

it would be amusing if it gets taken as a sparkling example of original wit.
posted by UbuRoivas at 4:14 AM on March 10

Yeah, I think MeFi injokes did cross the internet/life barrier a few times.

Of course, my current partner has what I'd like to call "MetaFilter Face." That is, whenever he sees that I'm on MetaFilter, or he hears the word "MetaFilter," he makes a face. It's not unlike sucking a lemon. This has in and of itself become a joke, but it's no Behatted Wild Man.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 4:24 AM on March 10

"internet/life barrier"?

this must be another of your injokes, because i'm afraid i can't make head or tail of it.
posted by UbuRoivas at 4:36 AM on March 10 [1 favorite]

And then he posted it here.
I backtagged the post where he mentioned it today.
posted by tellurian at 4:43 AM on March 10

...whenever he sees that I'm on MetaFilter, or he hears the word "MetaFilter," he makes a face.

Dump him. Now.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 4:45 AM on March 10 [2 favorites]

tellurian: what happened to the USA tag?
posted by UbuRoivas at 4:59 AM on March 10

Too late now. Are you exposing my geographic tag fetish? y2Karl and I are not likely to ever be mutual contacts.
posted by tellurian at 5:22 AM on March 10

no, you mentioned at a meetup that you were specifically tagging US-related posts with a USA tag, to counteract the prevailing mentality that everything - by default - is about the US, unless stated otherwise.

and for a second, i was thinking earlier "shit, y2karl tagged his meta with his own name! what a total - oh, that was tellurian's doing...."
posted by UbuRoivas at 5:28 AM on March 10

He's going to hate that. Yeah! I get the impression he's not big on tagging. I've tagged quite a lot of his posts. I know he's posted a lot, but he doesn't seem to have made the effort to go back and tag many of his own posts (thus precluding tags he wouldn't necessarily approve of).
posted by tellurian at 6:05 AM on March 10

injokes get carried across from the site into your personal life.

My SO is a MeFite, and yes, they do.
posted by Miko at 6:15 AM on March 10

Dump him. Now.

Dump The Mefi-Facer Already?
posted by cortex at 7:03 AM on March 10

And now, here I am, feeling like I'm on acid or something.

Just another day, then ?
posted by y2karl at 11:09 AM on March 10

...whenever he sees that I'm on MetaFilter, or he hears the word "MetaFilter," he makes a face.
Substitute "he" for "she" and you've described the reaction I get, too.
posted by dg at 1:25 PM on March 10

dg: "Substitute "he" for "she" and you've described the reaction I get, too."

If rolling of the eyes counts as making a face, we could start a club.
posted by team lowkey at 1:46 PM on March 10

can anybody remember the member whose 2yo would say "daddy, are you looking at the blue screen again?"

except, it was some scandinavian language.
posted by UbuRoivas at 1:54 PM on March 10

If rolling of the eyes counts as making a face, we could start a club.

If only there were an online community of some kind . . .
posted by Kirth Gerson at 2:59 PM on March 10

And now, here I am, feeling like I'm on acid or something.
Just another day, then ?

More so than usual, I'd say. Man. Reading that back-tagged post was like jumping into a time warp. I'm kinda dizzy.
posted by grapefruitmoon at 3:10 PM on March 10

why, just now, i used the "you know who else (etc)" formulation elsewhere, but i felt i had to explain that "who else" was actually hitler.

update - here was the response:

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahhahaha.
posted by UbuRoivas at 1:06 AM on March 11