Random BS people say that you get fed up with.

[DiamanteGeeza]

'Business speak' is also something that hurts my ears... meaningless phrases like "blue sky", "the view from 30,000 feet", "right-sizing", and "ducks in a row".

I've been in meetings (typically with marketing or sales people) where someone will say an entire sentence that consists of lots of words, but doesn't actually have ANY substance to it. Nothing. It was a totally pointless waste of breath, and yet there will still be lots of knowledgeable nodding and agreement from other marketing types in the room.


(PS. Is it just me, or are other people getting a really annoying video advert that covers a good portion of the forum text entry box?)

 

[LetalisK]

'Business speak' is also something that hurts my ears... meaningless phrases like "blue sky", "the view from 30,000 feet", "right-sizing", and "ducks in a row".

I've been in meetings (typically with marketing or sales people) where someone will say an entire sentence that consists of lots of words, but doesn't actually have ANY substance to it. Nothing. It was a totally pointless waste of breath, and yet there will still be lots of knowledgeable nodding and agreement from other marketing types in the room.


(PS. Is it just me, or are other people getting a really annoying video advert that covers a good portion of the forum text entry box?)

It's not just you, lots of us have and we've bitched about it to no avail.

 

[jamail77]

snip

I concern myself with the solutions people propose to "solve" the problem more than the science behind it. Because the solutions are usually insane (which is why so few politicians talk about them.)

I completely agree; there's some insane solutions out there. I also concern myself more with the solutions as I'm no expert on the science anyway. I just don't appreciate the skepticism because it's backed by some of the most obvious ignorance and stubbornness any reasonable person can see a mile away.

 

[triggrhappy94]

"The Dark Ages". The entire concept where people take a bunch of different historical phenomena from different areas and different time periods, add a bunch of exaggerations and some fairy tales which have no real basis in history, conflate it all together into an extremely negative stereotype and then apply it wholesale to an entire continent for a 1,000-year time period. Bonus points if there is something negative which did actually apply to that period and also applied to many others but is treated like it was only the European Middle Ages which had it (e.g. Hippocratic/Galenian medicine).

I don't like using myths as arguments in discussions about history anyway, but this one takes the cake because it's so widespread and ingrained in popular culture that you can just say "oh, the Dark Ages" and feel like you've won the argument.

I'm sure I don't have to tell you this, given your reference to Galenian medicine so this is for everyone else (and maybe you).

Most of the stuff we think of when thinking of the European Dark Ages--the Knights in shining armor and what-not--actually came about around the turn of 20th century (the early 1900s, I'm not sure I said that right) as apart of the Romantic movement. Romantics thought that Enlightenment thinkers had gone too far in taking emotion and religion out of life, so they worked to bring it back. The most notable members were Lord Byron and Mary Shelley (that I can think of without going to Wikipedia). They also liked returning some of the myth to history, more specifically ancient Roman, Greek, and (of course) Dark Ages history.

(Takes a deep breathe) In addition, the "Dark Ages" only really represented a dark age in European history. Muslim civilizations were actually doing really well--thus the Galenian medicine. A lot of the scientific records we have today from the Roman Empire were actually saved and preserved by Muslims (I have no idea if they're the Byzantines or not, my knowledge of Middle Eastern history isn't as good). Africa also had flourishing empires, and there's a fifty-fifty chance that China wasn't in the middle of a peasant revolt.

 

[jamail77]

snip

snip

snip

The skepticism is usually towards the motives of the people advancing solutions to the problems, i.e. the skeptics don't see those people as either honest or trustworthy. Al Gore is a great example of this. He's set to make billions if carbon trading becomes a thing in the United States (because of the investments he's made.) He's a prophet seeking profit. Beware people like that.

I can't say that is true from my experience or from the polls I have seen surveying opinion on the reality of global warming. I know plenty of people before Al Gore popularized the movement who denied it outright and mentioned no people whatsoever to be cautious about. I know the science quite well and knew it was more than cautious skepticism; it was denial.

Al Gore is set to make a lot of money but I honestly believe, though I'm not sure, that he has good intentions. My mother met him and knows him fairly well; she comments on how nice he is and such. He also doesn't have as much to gain as people think; people make fun of him for how stubborn he is actually which has hurt his reputation. That isn't proof of course.

Just look at this response I got on a video (it's ridiculous logic):

"You will also notice that is these cities, they have modern conveniences and actually have good technology. Progress is needed. We cant live like cavemen. We cant live in the trees. We need cars. We need electricity. We need factories. We need Oil. We need corporations.
Besides I don't actually believe we cause global warming anyways but even if we did it is worth it not to be living like cavemen."

Yes, we need to live like caveman to make sure we treat ourselves and hence the environment and its counter effects on us decently. It's not like before the Industrial Revolution we had still had buildings and technological advances or conveniences or anything. There are decent solutions. -_-

 

[Erttheking]

I'm getting tired of people saying things like "Gamers deserve everything Fox news throws at them" when they see things like the misogynistic gamers attacking Tropes Vs Women. We really, REALLY shouldn't be judging a community consisting of tens of millions of people because of the actions of a vocal minority.

 

[RyQ_TMC]

(Takes a deep breathe) In addition, the "Dark Ages" only really represented a dark age in European history. Muslim civilizations were actually doing really well--thus the Galenian medicine. A lot of the scientific records we have today from the Roman Empire were actually saved and preserved by Muslims (I have no idea if they're the Byzantines or not, my knowledge of Middle Eastern history isn't as good). Africa also had flourishing empires, and there's a fifty-fifty chance that China wasn't in the middle of a peasant revolt.

I don't mean the historical period referred to as the Dark Ages (i.e. the Early Middle Ages, roughly 5th-10th centuries), I mean the European Middle Ages as a whole (i.e. rougly 5th-15th centuries), which often get the name "the Dark Ages" in popular arguments. And I specifically mean negative stereotypes - the Romantic "knights in shining armour" is historically inaccurate, but also neutral-positive. The Early Middle Ages in Europe were indeed a fairly "primitive" period (I don't like this term and I'm using it cautiously here), but by the time of the Carolingian Reneissance (early 9th century) Europe was on its way out of them.

I am aware of what was happening outside of Europe - especially of the work the Muslims have done preserving the Greek and Roman manuscripts. However, by the end of 12th century, European science surpassed them (there was a lot of cross-pollination and a lot of European advancement was made possible thanks to the Muslim work), mathematics and physics were advancing, and towards the Late Middle Ages anatomy as well (which began the long way towards loosening the grip Galen's legacy had on medicine and ultimately gave us modern medicine in the late 19th century).

To be fair, a big portion of the negative stereotype is the legacy of Religious Wars (when both Protestant and Catholic chroniclers would blow negative stuff out of proportion or straight up pull shit out of their asses to make their opponents look bad) and the shift of European thinking from Aristotelian to Platonian in the Reneissance, which lead to a fashion of publicly denouncing Medieval thinkers as "primitive" (as an extreme example, the word "dunce" comes from John Duns Scotus - that's the level of disrespect they were getting), destroying Medieval manuscripts or using them as material for book binding. And then the Enlightenment thinkers popularized the negative stereotypes and myths. So a lot of what we now know of the Middle Ages is relatively recent work, because historiography was as mired in the stereotype as anything else.

 

[Strazdas]

(PS. Is it just me, or are other people getting a really annoying video advert that covers a good portion of the forum text entry box?)

Its for everyone and the official response was go get yourself premium if you dont want ads.
im fine with ads when they are in thier place. vidoe advert poping on top of a forum and advertisement inside video IS NOT.

 

[IndieForever]

It's rarely helpful to correct grammar or punctuation mistakes on the 'net due to phones, people typing quickly and many other reasons but some word usage makes me adopt a face as if I've just sucked a whole lemon.

'Off of' - 'the actress off of that TV show..', 'it was based off of another book by..' No. You mean 'from' or 'on'. I don't think anything can be 'based off' something else and a character is on or from a show, not off it. I think this form is more widespread in the States than anywhere else but it's creeping in to common usage almost everywhere I look. Please, please make it go away.

Starting a sentence (or a new thread) with the word 'so'. 'So I just finished watching the show...', 'So I'm thinking about doing X, Y or Z.' Aaaghh. No again. 'So' is an adverb or conjunction. So tall, so small, so large; that will induce no lemon sucking. The price of X was going up so I bought Y instead. Totally lemon-free. If you start your sentence with 'so' you are essentially starting your sentence with 'therefore' or 'because'. Like all humans I make snap judgements about the education and age of someone in a few seconds based on what they write so I mentally assign the author into the 'mid-teens, slightly whiny and probably ends every sentence they speak by raising the pitch of the last syllable as if it were a question' category.

The teenage use of the word 'like'. Saying 'like' should be restricted to legally-recognised adults only.

The thing is, of course, that language constantly evolves and what smells like made-up grammar BS to me today might make it into the next edition of the dictionaries.

So I like totally wanted to get that off of my chest.

 

[Samus Aran but a man]

Three words: "That's so gay."

I know that the word didn't always mean "homosexual", but that is the general definition nowadays. When people use it to describe something they find stupid or abhorrent, it's upsetting.

 

[A Raging Emo]

I find it frustrating that literally nobody knows how to use the word "literally" correctly.


See what I did there? Total misuse of the word, and I get so sick of hearing people say "literally" when I doubt they have any grasp on what the word actually means.

Jesus Christ, this. This and "irregardless" and "guesstimate" and all that shite.

Fucking English language, man.

On Topic: I hate hearing from my boss how I play too many video games. See, we were talking about time off work the other day and their idea of down time is not having to do anything at all (ie, sitting in front of the tele), where as my idea of down time is actually doing something that I enjoy (like playing vidya). It seems to me though that this is completely incomprehensible to them, and I don't know why. D:

 

[Azure23]

When people take an issue more seriously when it happens to a girl or a child . " It's a man he can take it ". But if it happens to a women thry get all up and arms .

When people say that the harassment a girl suffers from the (generally male) gaming community just needs to be "taken" and that we need to "grow a spine" and "accept that it happens".

These people need to die in a fire.

Literally die a in fire.

Actually you know what people who think that any form of harassment should be dealt with by telling the VICTIM to "suck it up" need to all die in a fire.

Yeah.

You do really guys get harrassed too right? Have you ever played any kind of multiplayer game ? The online community is just plain nasty .

Sure, I've been harassed in plenty of multiplayer games, usually it was when my K/D ratio was less than admirable. Or when it was too good, then it was "hax!"

However, I have never, EVER been harassed solely due to my being a guy or my masculine sounding username. You get what I'm saying? Because it's pretty damn obvious and self evident.

Actually this leads nicely in to what I wanted to say annoys the shit outta me. When gamers say that they're tired of the sexism in gaming conversation, or that its been discussed to death and we can drop it. If we're still at the point where we heap praise upon a game solely for portraying a female character well, that's sad. That should be the minimum. Fellow enjoyers of the electronic arts, if nothing is changed, how can the conversation be over?

Another feminism related pet peeve of mine that I see all over these forums, nice guy threads and friend zone threads. Fuck those, you know what nice guys? She didn't friend zone you, you "girlfriend zoned" her. Boom, Done. Shut up.

 

[poison1010]

Any statement that starts with "Back in my day..."

Yes, life changes throughout the years and the changes happen because of millions of reasons. I don't need to feel bad for how society as a whole chose to be.

 

[mlbslugger06]

When people make any statement which dissolves them of any responsibility or accountability by saying "Who am I to question, say, or argue...etc." You have a mind capable of reason! Think and develop some self-esteem. If you can't defend what you believe, why you act or who you are, who can?

 

[Alex Ford]

I find it frustrating that some people don't call computers with OSX PCs. a PC is a personal computer, the operating system has no bearing on that.

that depends on what you call a computer. for all intents and purposes Macs right now are nothing but smart tvs gone extreme. I mean if we call that a computer, we may as well call our phones PCs, consoles PCs and so on. I understand that when you have PC with OSX its a PC. but a MAC is hardly a PC.

Could you specify what disqualifies Macs from being PCs?
Having used both Windows and OSX quite a lot I can assure you, that aside from some OS specific software
there is basically nothing one OS can do that the other cannot.

 

[Da Orky Man]

"Young people are what's wrong with the world," news flash Cato the Elder was decrying the youth of Rome over 2000 years ago and blamed them for the decline of the Republic, hence I've started to realize that it's just old people in general moaning and complaining.

where is your rome empire now? oh, thats right, it fell.
im joking of course, but you picked a pretty poor example. especially when many historians thing that 2000 years ago was the time when the empire actually did start to decline.

NO worries then. Cato the Elder lived between 234 BC and 149 BC, a good while before the supposed date of the start of ecline.

I'd also like to point out that, two thousand years ago, the Roman Empire was only about 40 years old. The year when Rome stopped being the Roman Republic and became the Roman Empire is usually set at 27 BC, when Octavian was granted the title of Augustus, and became the first Roman Emperor.

I'd alo like to ask exactly why the Empire was said to have started declining at a mere 40 years of age. Its greatest extent was at 117 AD, as seen here:

Spoiler: Somewhat large image

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/00/Roman_Empire_Trajan_117AD.png/1024px-Roman_Empire_Trajan_117AD.png

It didn't start really losing influence until the end of the reign of the last 'good' Roman Emperor, Marcus Aurelius, when the Empire passed to Commodus.

'Good' Roman Emperors: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/209020/Five-Good-Emperors

 

[EyeReaper]

I hate it when people quote memes and think they're funny because of it. If you want to be funny, tell a joke, not say the same sentence everybody has heard a thousand times. Also, the people who say or do something really stupid/hurtful, and think they can pass it off with a "loljk" or something similar. the people who do this really need to learn to think before you speak.
One last one, any time someone tries to justify piracy. "Oh, EA doesn't deserve my money" Well maybe you don't deserve EA's games then.

 

[The Funslinger]

When people don't use plastic bags to, "Save a plastic tree." I hear people say this all the time, and you know what?

PLASTIC DOES NOT COME FROM TREES!!!

There, I feel better now.

Maybe they just really like those fake Christmas trees you can buy