Any thread where someone posits some batshit crazy point of view where a pile on follows can expect to see a defense with some variant of “Yes, and everyone at the time said Copernicus was wrong too, but he was ultimately proven to be correct and now everyone agrees with him.”
Which is always followed by the saying “They laughed at Copernicus, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown”.
Similarly, every time someone posts something like “you gotta keep an open mind”, someone responds with “watch out that your brain doesn’t fall out”.
Anecdote doesn’t equal data and all that, but I ran across an example of this in Sue Grafton’s “J is for Judgement.” She described a character as flaunting a law. The book was written in 1993. I think it’s time to give up fighting that battle. Reading it did take me out of the book briefly, but that’s mostly because I though about the SDMB when I saw the description rather than being bothered by bad grammar 
.
You’ll pry my cold dead hands off of the difference between your and you’re…between their and there…
On the other hand, I’ve given up on “begs the question”.
Sue Grafton is definitely an example of how not to write - both in her use of flout/flaunt, but also general storytelling.
Literally anytime there’s anything revolving “Say something illegal you have done” multiple people will bring up “Well I shoplifted candies when I was a kid” like that’s literally the only illegal thing they ever done in their entire lives.
The two most closely linked separate events in history have got to be Korean Air Lines Flight 007 and Iran Air Flight 655. Literally if someone posts something about one immediately afterwards somebody will post the other super defensively. I have literally never seen a thread that talked about one without the other immediately being brought up.
In anything written about Tom Cruise the following will ALWAYS be brought up in this order.
- Scientology
- His Height
- Always doing his own stunts
- Jumping on Oprahs couch
- Him being Gay
In every thread where Centrifugal Force is mentioned, someone will always try to correct it to Centripetal, even if the person did really mean Centrifugal Force, and understands, or even acknowledged that it’s a virtual entity.
In every post about Facebook, someone has to post, ‘If you don’t know what the product is, YOU’RE the product!’
It’s 50/50 if that beats the multitude of people crowing that they don’t have a Facebook account.
When I saw the thread “If you had $1,000,000.00 to invest…” I knew someone was going to make a reference to the Barenaked Ladies song. I was right.
I have nothing against vegans and in fact, admire them. None the less, I found this cartoon funny and sort of relating to the topic at hand… You could substitute many different groups for vegans in the caption.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/189571352@N07/51412261444/in/dateposted/
It doesn’t happen all that often–though more often than you’d think–but if anyone ever mentions Hedy Lamarr, you can be sure that some wit will come along and respond, “That’s Hedley!”
Pro tip: Just because it was funny when Harvey Korman said it, doesn’t mean it’s funny when you say it.
Nah. These people are on to something. Not only is comedy improved when it’s thoroughly explained, it also improves when habitually repeated. Just ask my teenaged self and his rote memorization of most Monty Python films.
In every thread about bidets, or bidet attachments, there is always someone who can’t be convinced of their efficacy, and will defend smearing with paper.
Anytime anyone talks about Taco Bell someone else will immediately bring up both
- Taco Bell isn’t REAL authentic Mexican food
And
- Why eat at Taco Bell when you can go eat at a local hole in the wall authentic Mexican restaurant instead?
!= = ≠
^like
Every thread where the OP asks that it not become a political discussion, becomes a political discussion.
OH yeah, and although that isn’t necessarily wrong is it annoying and not helpful.
Classic threadshit, IMHO.
We always get that quote wrong.
Don't forget: The plural of anecdote is data.
You may have heard the phrase the plural of anecdote is not data. It turns out that this is a misquote. The original aphorism, by the political scientist Ray Wolfinger, was just the opposite: The plural of anecdote is data.
Wolfinger’s formulation makes sense: Data does not have a virgin birth. It comes to us from somewhere. Someone set up a procedure to collect and record it. Sometimes this person is a scientist, but she also could be a journalist.
Of course some anecdotes are worthless data, but you give a good example. That may not be the best hill for grammaticists to die upon.