Whenever someone makes an innocent spelling mistake, some lunatic will come in and reply solely to the mistake. “You like to ork cows?”
Jeremytt:
And she’s damned cute, too.
ExTank’s Axiom: Gun Control Debates are generally useless.
Corollary1: the more vehement the author’s post, the more likely it is that they know little, if anything, of value on the subject.
Corollary2: the lack of knowledge on the subject will not preclude any given nit from discoursing at length on the subject. (Note to self: Careful where you’re putting that there foot.)
Corollary3: In spite of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of previous Gun Control Debates, there will always be a willing jackass who will post a new one without doing a forum search for previous threads on the subject.
As your knowledge about the thread subject being discussed increases the likelyhood of you needing to apologise for something increases proportionately. Primarily due to
a. Coming off as a superior know-it-all
b. Assuming that because of your vast knowledge you can assume the contents of each post without actually reading it.
c. Knowing that as an expert you don’t need to look verify anything before spouting complex things.
Tenebras’ Law: Any poster who admits to playing video games and/or watching Star Trek while at the same time having a significant other, will be attacked within 5 subsequent posts, sometimes immediately…
Tenebras
We generally call those dopefests
"Strainger’s Law:
The more creative and witty you think your OP is, the fewer responses it will receive."
At last, the secret! Post drek!
Auntie Em’s Law:
The second you post a narrative about your best friend’s masturbating husband (figuring she’ll never know, because she hasn’t even been on the board in like, three months, so she’s probably never coming back, right?), said friend will return to the board and immediately choose that post, out of the teeming millions of other more interesting posts, to read.
Gaudere’s Law pertains specifically to spelling errors, so I coined…
Chef Troy’s Corollary to Gaudere’s Law
Which states: Any post mocking the grammar and usage of another poster will inevitably contain a grammar and/or usage error of its own.
Only professional editors like me are even partially exempt from this, and only when we take the time to edit our own work very carefully.
Want to see a hilarious example of Chef Troy’s Corollary in action? Check out this exchange in “Letters to the Editor” from issue 9 of Teemings.
(Euty charitably refrained from pointing it out, but apparently the letter-writer misspelled his own name when signing his post. 'Cause, you know, there’s no WAY a moderator would make such a mistake unless he was trying to annoy the letter-writer.)
CalMeacham’s Third Law:
All good sets of law come in threes.
Think about it – Newton’s Laws of Motion, the Laws of Thermodynamics, Asimov’s Rules of Robotics.
I haven’t thought of the other two yet. Or maybe this isn’t a “good set”.