TL;DR Makes Me Want to Punch Someone in the Face.

[Quaidis]

In the past I'd see people post the 'Too Long; Didn't Read' abbreviation to posts that were quite understandably long and hard to read. Like those people who don't section things off into paragraphs or made the entire post one long, long, long run-on sentence. That's not what I'm talking about.

It's the intense miss-use of it I've seen over the more recent years that pisses me off. A post, say, this large was skipped over entirely with the TL;DR montage. This is only, what, six sentences so far? That's not too long! What the fuck?

Is it the current generation or the way people are headed that makes TL;DR more heavily used? Are people just lazy? They can't read anymore? If so, why are they on a forum and replying to a thread they didn't read? It blows my mind and trying to understand it only confuses me. Thus why this thread was created. Why do you think people are in this 'I don't want to read a post' mentality more heavily now?

What really got me was this one RP I was in (on a different forum that I'm not going to link to). I'd write this decent post (let's say three or four paragraphs), nicely detailed, and the person GMing would either ignore my post completely or only reply off the first, say, paragraph of it. Then everyone involved would get confused. When inquired, the GM would say, "Only do a sentence or two a post. I don't want read it all." What? But... I... Grah! And this has happened more than once with different people - to more people than myself.

The whole thing has me worried about literacy as a whole, really. Have you noticed a similar trend? And, if you don't want to ***** about TL;DR, feel free to tell me what abbreviation drives you insane.




(Those who only reply with 'TL;DR' are not original. Besides, who knows what the mods would do to you.)


Captcha: hairy eyeball

 

[Quaidis]

I've never seen anyone say TL;DR after six sentences, you seem to be overreacting.

TL;DR you're whinging over nothing.

Whinging? Were they hot whings? Man, now I'm hungry.

 

[bobmus]

I've never seen anyone say TL;DR after six sentences, you seem to be overreacting.

TL;DR you're whinging over nothing.

Whinging? Were they hot whings? Man, now I'm hungry.

Whinging is not a miss-spelling of whining. Google it.

It's a stupid acronym used by stupid people, but summarising your own posts is also a good strategy to aid those who don't have a lot of time. Those who would reply to you with a TL;DR are beyond reach.

 

[Hazy992]

Joking aside, it's not really that big of a deal IMO. If someone says 'TL;DR' to a short post they clearly had nothing to contribute anyway.

 

[Eclipse Dragon]

If you're to lazy to read the first post of a topic then you probably shouldn't be posting in the topic at all. Some people will post a reply based souly off the title, and often the OP actually has an opinion that is opposite and just used that title to catch interest.

What really got me was this one RP I was in (on a different forum that I'm not going to link to). I'd write this decent post (let's say three or four paragraphs), nicely detailed, and the person GMing would either ignore my post completely or only reply off the first, say, paragraph of it. Then everyone involved would get confused. When inquired, the GM would say, "Only do a sentence or two a post. I don't want read it all." What? But... I... Grah! And this has happened more than once with different people - to more people than myself.

Now that is just silly, as a lot of more serious RP communities actually encourage long post, because it gives a better feel of the environment surrounding the characters, or the character's personality based off of the body language. The post's with the best storytelling are always the longest. I've been in communities where short post were frowned upon as "low content", and I find it much more difficult to respond to an RP post that is short. There's just not much to go off of.

 

[Launcelot111]

I TL;DR myself sometimes because I digress too much and I feel it would be helpful to reiterate my point for clarity's sake.

People who TL;DR others are terrible. It's super rude and reflects poorly on you. Why is someone else's argument suddenly negated due to your laziness? If you don't want to read something, then you shouldn't respond to it either

 

[Quaidis]

I've never seen anyone say TL;DR after six sentences, you seem to be overreacting.

TL;DR you're whinging over nothing.

Whinging? Were they hot whings? Man, now I'm hungry.

Whinging is not a miss-spelling of whining. Google it.

*googles*

I still read that as 'winging' and felt the need to throw a pun However, thank you for clearing that up. I have learned my lesson.

 

[lRookiel]

Joking aside, it's not really that big of a deal IMO. If someone says 'TL;DR' to a short post they clearly had nothing to contribute anyway.

That is one of the best gif pictures I've ever seen, made me laugh for a good 2 minutes solid, cheers hazy you have brightened up a once sad day :3

OT: People can't be bothered to read it all, or don't give a fuck it's simple as that really. It's best that you try to get over it.

 

[Hazy992]

Joking aside, it's not really that big of a deal IMO. If someone says 'TL;DR' to a short post they clearly had nothing to contribute anyway.

That is one of the best gif pictures I've ever seen, made me laugh for a good 2 minutes solid, cheers hazy you have brightened up a once sad day :3

'Didn't read LOL' gifs are some of the funniest gifs I've seen

 

[LordFish]

I honestly got to the end of the post and thought "What's that got to do with the French?"

For some reason I'd read the thread title as "TL;DR (as in, this is a long post) I want to punch the French in the face"

I wonder why that is? :S

 

[thebakedpotato]

Think it is less a literacy thing and more a people being lazy and dickish thing.

 

[aestu]

Bad parents raising bad kids with no patience or discipline who are used to having someone else do all the thinking and every bar lowered to their level.

 

[Quaidis]

I honestly got to the end of the post and thought "What's that got to do with the French?"

For some reason I'd read the thread title as "TL;DR (as in, this is a long post) I want to punch the French in the face"

I wonder why that is? :S

Because those French deserve a good punch in the face. There need not be an explanation over why. Damned, dirty French. Always baiting me towards violence with their smarmy looks and high-priced food. *shakes fist* And cognac!

 

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

I love this.
I love this so much.

 

[LordFish]

Because those French deserve a good punch in the face. There need not be an explanation over why. Damned, dirty French. Always baiting me towards violence with their smarmy looks and high-priced food. *shakes fist* And cognac!

And their hairy women and stripy garlic salesman!

 

[Hazy992]

I love this.
I love this so much.

Well have I got the gif for you!

 

[McMullen]

I blame Twitter. As soon as I heard Twitter had a 140 char limit, or whatever it was, I expected it to fail and lost all interest in it. I was disappointed. I don't want to sound like the old guy ranting about all this new-fangled technology the kids are into, but I think the importance of quality over quantity of communication is being lost. TL;DR is a symptom of that.

 

[Jack Rascal]

I love this.
I love this so much.

Well have I got the gif for you!

Pfft. This is much better. But I love that Jamie one!!

OP: Um. not a friend of TL;DR. But I might have used it once, maybe. Could be twice... But those posts would have been almost pages of rambling with only a hint of actual topic. If you're too lazy to read the whole post (if it's written OK and all) then don't reply only after reading the thread title.

 

[shrekfan246]

*googles*

I still read that as 'winging' and felt the need to throw a pun However, thank you for clearing that up. I have learned my lesson.

If you're not British, or don't spend much time listening to other people who are British, it's an understandable mistake to make, as "whinging" is, along with "tosser" and "wanker", a primarily British saying. Australians use it a lot too. I'd never heard it until I started raiding with Australians in World of Warcraft.

OT: At least here on the Escapist, it's very rare that I'll see someone use "TL;DR" on somebody else. It happens every now and then, but usually those posts are pretty arrogant to begin with and add very little to the conversation at hand. Most often people will use "TL;DR" to summarize their own posts, which I think is a perfectly legitimate use for it. Again, that's really only on this website though, because... well, spending a prolonged amount of time among the communities of most other websites makes me sad.

I will say that I don't really think people are any less literate than in the past though. It's just much easier now for those people to express their opinions alongside those of us who are obsessively concerned with proper spelling and grammatical structure.

[sub]Also, I'm not going to lie, I was tempted to include a smart-ass "TL;DR" in the beginning of my post just because of the title of this thread.[/sub]