tags: Questions, Society, flame, fotw, grammar, irony, punctuation, spelling
Irony: Flame or Funny?
August 4th, 2008, by Rich.
Please help! A comment just arrived on the “contact us” page, and it’s a work of art. I can’t decide if it’s a flame, or something intentionally funny. The irony is beautiful.
The comment comes from Jane, who writes (verbatim):
Can I help you with your spelling, any site which mis-spells as much as you is truly doomed, even foreignors know the difference between your, you’re and what you have written, this country has gone to the dogs, good luck losers
Looking over the server logs, I can see that Jane has visited only this page, before leaving her comment (she arrived via a google search for “phone numbers direct”). Curiously the page Jane read has no incorrect use of “your” (possessive) or “you’re” (accusative) in either the article or the comments… bizarre.
So; flame or intentional irony? If your English skills are up to it, see if you’re able to spot the spelling, grammar and punctuation mistakes cleverly woven into Jane’s missive. If it’s a flame I may have to create a new tag (FOTW) so I can keep track of any similar comments that share its brilliance.
August 5th, 2008 at 3:02 am
Pathetic flame attempt, slightly ironic. Put down the crack pipe, Jane.
August 5th, 2008 at 8:12 am
Sheer brilliance. It had to take quite a bit of time and indeed skill to construct a sentence with so many errors. The inclusion of a question at the beginning without the appropriate punctuation mark is a masterstroke.
In reality Jane is probably a telemarketer from the company in question thereby proving that “foreigners” do know nothing about the English language.
August 5th, 2008 at 9:27 pm
A thought on as to where “Jane” might be from: “To go to the dogs” sounds like a nearly literal translation of the German phrase “vor die Hunde gehen”.
IMHO Jane’s comment is neither a true flame nor a straightforward offer of help and by far not a masterpiece of irony. I can’t even imagine what it was originally meant to be by Jane. To me it seems simply extraneous.
Like quite some pieces of so called modern art. They make you wonder what their meaning is. But there is no meaning to them. And that is just why you keep wondering. So this is why the human ability to forget easily is a divine grace! ;-)
August 6th, 2008 at 8:30 am
Perhaps the best way to douse a flame is to extend the right hand, pull down the lever and flush it away?
Actually, though, it sounds rather like the instructions I received yesterday on how to operate a piece of electrical cookware:
(To make chips) “Spread potatoes evenly in a non stick baking pan. If desired, brush or toss with a small amount of added crispness”. Does that mean spray with a flame thrower?
Or: (Baked fish):
“Ingredients….4 Russet potatoes, scrubbed, 1 tbsp solid vegetable shortening”.
No doubt the next book will explain the “Water into wine” method?
September 1st, 2008 at 7:35 pm
You didn’t say if she was trying to promote a web site. My guess is that Jane’s email was a machine generated comment designed by bypass spam filters. I think that the irony is purely unintentional.
September 1st, 2008 at 8:19 pm
Nope, no advert at all! I’ve searched for various parts of the text and it’s not appeared anywhere else (which it should have done by now if it was automated).
September 22nd, 2008 at 11:25 am
I take great pleasure in getting comments like this (by “this” I mean the one you got, not the one I’m leaving) on the blogs I run.
Having said that I often notice that they show up just before a series of spam comments all on the same post.
Maybe they’re just seeing if you’re spam worthy, Rich.
December 3rd, 2008 at 1:15 pm
One of the most universal rules of the internet has ever been thus: “He/she who shall attempt to demonstrate their superiority by criticising the spelling/grammar/punctuation of others (delete as appropriate) shall become what he/she most hates.”
Then again, from the bewildered tone and utterly crazed semantics, I can only assume that she sent it as part of a speed emailing contest where she only had 23 seconds to get the message written and posted. Maybe you should direct her to the newly revamped comments pages on the Daily Mail’s site where her no-nonsense style and brazen wit would be better appreciated.