I am involved in multiple dog forums, I volunteer at an animal shelter and I go to PetSmart a lot.
I absolutly hate it when someone asks a simple question, like in this hypothetical exchange:
Someone is walking in a dog park/PetSmart/etc and they see a person with a “Small Brown Dog”, they ask the owner if the SBD is a “Insert Breed”. Owner responds, "Mr. Fluffykins is an “Different Breed” in the tone of someone being asked if the sky is green.
On forums I see alot of:
Someone asks about ,“gasp”, food/training/breeds/collars and they get answers of, “The poor dear knows not what he/she is doing!”. Not even marginally constructive, just “Adult talking to a 5 year old”.
There is an old Punch cartoon – 1800’s, I think – which shows a British fox hunt. The whole regalia, all the nobs in their coats, etc. And they’re all rolling around screaming in laughter, at the expense of one poor confused fellow… “The chap who referred to the hounds as ‘dogs.’”
And… I’m with you. That’s just cruel. People aren’t born knowing stuff; we have to find out, and asking is a perfectly good way of learning. Sneering at someone for asking a question – even a naïve question – is condescending, mean-spirited, cruel, and worse, it tends to alienate the victim.
“Oh, well, if this is what dog people are like, fuck 'em. I want nothing to do with such a snobbish pastime.”
(I’ve seen this a lot in the Society for Creative Anachronisms. Some poor jasper tries to speak in Elizabethan/Jacobean, gets it wrong, and is suddenly the butt of immense snide sneering disdain. A much more healthy approach is a gentle and polite correction. “Well, no, you can’t just add ‘eth’ to the end of any old word. Here’s a web site that shows how it’s properly done.”
Not, “Hey, Beaumont, haw haw, here’s another churl who can’t speaketh correctly!”
When done in Computer Science circles, we call this sort of thing Nerdy Strutting. Note that it refers to two things: intentionally asking questions you know the answer to to make yourself sound smart, and sneering at inconsequential or slightly wrong bullshit. What you’re describing is largely the latter.
“Well, duh, I wasn’t speaking in Elizabethan. I was speaking in creatively anachronistic Elizabethan.”
I remember a few years back when Parliament was drafting the legislation on fox-hunting and so on, and there was a letter in the Telegraph talking sniffily about "hunting with ‘dogs’ " (which was how it was mostly phrased in the debates). I looked on and chuckled quietly, thinking this was on a par with Estella’s quote “He calls the Knaves ‘Jacks’, this boy” - whatever the rights and wrongs of the issue, resorting to a shibboleth isn’t the answer.
The cartoon sounds like the kind of thing H. M. Bateman would have done, but I can’t find if he actually did this one.
Ha, I came in here just to mention the SCA, which has more than its share of pedants, and yes, it turns off people. Not to say there aren’t really really nice people there too! I have encountered both, but I will never forget the person who mocked me quite relentlessly for pronouncing the name of a town wrong (accent on the wrong syllable), saying it was obvious I wasn’t from around here.
I was trying to be polite, being new in the organization, so I didn’t tell him that I’d lived in the area for 20 years, but his town was just so unimportant I’d never had cause to say it or hear it.
Anyway, it’s some sort of way of making your thing special. “You just don’t get it,” essentially, and it’s annoying and rude.
[QUOTE=Trinopus;17983978
(I’ve seen this a lot in the Society for Creative Anachronisms. Some poor jasper tries to speak in Elizabethan/Jacobean, gets it wrong, and is suddenly the butt of immense snide sneering disdain. A much more healthy approach is a gentle and polite correction. “Well, no, you can’t just add ‘eth’ to the end of any old word. Here’s a web site that shows how it’s properly done.”[/QUOTE]
As you talking about Renfair? Cause I am never seen this in my forty years in the SCA. Actually few folks try to talk like that at all. We do pepper conversations with a lot of “My Lord” “My Lady” etc, yes.
Heh. No, SCA. Renfair people are super easy going and don’t care what you wear or how you talk or even if you try. SCA people go on and on and on because someone wore nylon under their clothes at an event, for heaven’s sakes.
Now are different chapters different to guests? I am 100% sure of this. But I think that being in the SCA for 40 years isn’t really going to tell you how they treat newbies. Only newbies can tell you how they are treated.
Umm, you do know I was thus a newbie once, right? There is a certain amount of “garb snarking” often done behind someones back, but since people don’t talk “Elizabethan/Jacobean” in the SCA, it’s hard to imagine you’re correct. It’s like you saying SCAers snark on people for not wearing a historically accurate Civil War uniform.
Reminds me of something I saw on Twitter about people getting a hard time because they mispronounce something they’ve read, and why do we give these people grief. They read a word that they’ve never heard before, but didn’t immediately go to a dictionary to see the pronunciation - big whoop.
“Everyone knows it’s pronounced with the accent on the first syllable.” Whatev, douche.
Cause I am never seen this in my forty years in the SCA. Actually few folks try to talk like that at all. We do pepper conversations with a lot of “My Lord” “My Lady” etc, yes.