I ventured into GD today, and came across this thread about Québec sovereignty, and it includes a post in which Canada is spelled as Canadia.
And so, I came over to the Pit to say the following:
To all of you arrogant, self-centered assholes who think it’s perfectly alright to go around deliberately misspelling my country’s name- fuck you. In the above thread, there was NO REASON to do so, other than to show yourself as a self-centered jerk who thinks everything has to be done just like it’s done in the fucking USA. I don’t care that “american” follows from “america” - that doesn’t mean everything else in the fucking universe has to follow in the same way.
The same goes for Canuckistan, whenever the topic goes to anything regarding social policy - it’s both insulting to me, and, I expect, to the peoples of countries that DO have “istan” in their names, as it implies that these are clearly inferior countries and policies than those of the good old USA.
Now, I can take a joke. Occasionally, such as in MPSIMS, it might be funny, or at least it wouldn’t bother me. But in GD, or GQ, this deliberate misspelling offends me. Aren’t we supposed to be better than that? Aren’t we supposed to be answering questions, discussing issues, and generally trying to rise above the idiocy that surrounds us on a daily basis? And then people wander in and toss in this “joke”, because Canada is an easy target?
Do you even know if he did it deliberately? Reading the post I don’t find it particularly insulting, it seems like it was just a typo, as **Guin **says! And all this rage!
I think ** mnemosyne** and Valteron should take a break from the boards, maybe go on a cross-Canada road-trip together, chat about their personal views of Canada’s history and significance, and then come back to us to report on their conclusions.
It was a typo. In the last year, the poster has made 22 references to Canada and spelled it “Canadia” exactly once. The post to which you took exception was hardly an insulting attack on the country, so why did you decide to go ballistic?
(If you want to be insulted by “Canuckistan,” I could see the point (although I would not feel prompted to rage by similar actions, myself), but getting worked up over a single inadvertant misspelling demonstrates a lack of proportion.)
Way to throw a fit over nothing. It looks like a typo to me, and even if it weren’t, who the hell cares?
It’s not as though “Canadia” is terribly deprecating. I say “Canadia” myself sometimes, in reference to an old comic song (by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie, I think.) Hell, I like to use “Canuckistan,” although perhaps with a bit more irony than Pat Buchanan.
When I was younger, I did a radio show with a fella who consistently referred to our neighbour to the south as “the United Police States of Americults,” and none of our American guests took particular exception to this somewhat mean-spirited substitution. (Though they were mostly freaks. I imagine if we did a country music show our guests might have had something to say about that.)
It’s just possible that you’ve been spending a little too much time swilling Tim’s.
Not so much a fumble-finger typo as a mental one. Lots of country names end with “ia” (Romania, Zambia, Australia, etc) and particularly if one is a touch typist you don’t really think about what you’re typing and you could be going on and let an “ia” slip in.
Yea, and I agree that the OP is taking offence over pretty much nothing.
Seeing as how the letter “i” is not adjacent to, or, really, anywhere near any of the other letters needed to spell “Canada” on a qwerty keyboard (which I believe is the most common layout) it’s one hell of a typo! “Canadsa” or “Canana” or things like that, I could accept as a “typo” but I’ve just seen this often enough in threads that it annoyed me enough to start a thread about it.
While I did point to the thread in question, I didn’t single out that poster because of the possibility that it was a typo, but as I said, I’ve seen it often enough and today it grated on me.
It just irks me. I don’t go into threads and post a factual reply about something in the States and call it something else. I don’t use alternate names that are clearly intended to be derogatory to refer to people from other countries. Why is it ok to do this with Canada? It just seems that people like to take that dig at Canada, and if they have the opportunity to use it, they do. I find that rude.
And, FYI, there is no caffeine involved in this post, and I’m female. Just for clarification. You’re all welcome to think I’m overreacting. I don’t believe I am. It bothers me, so I’m saying it.
A lot of people have a pattern for commonly-typed words that “just happens” with other, similar words. I used to work for a company called “Womex” and damned if, the whole time I worked there, could I type the word “women” without going back and deleting the extraneous X.
If someone is used to typing “Canadian” or “Canadians”, it’s likely that “Canadia” is a typo that might “just happen”.
(However, given the disproportionate strength of your ire, I’m slightly inclined to type “Canadia” more often, just for shits and giggles.)
I suppose it would be inappropriate to mention that the MST3k host segment, The Canada Song, is available on You Tube for your viewing pleasure? (I’ll post a link if it won’t set of a Mod Alarm …)
