Preemptive autopsy, that’ll go with postnatal abortion in my lexacon.
MORE PEEVES:
I too hate it when someone lists 13 or so items in response to a “what’s your favorite…” question. Can you not read?
Initiation threads. Hate 'em. Despise them. Abominate them! BAN THEM!
Yet Another Stupid Pointless Boring Dumb Sequential Thread Title Thread.
And to balance the karma:
Things I love: the delurking of a longtime poster. I rarely point this out or comment on it. I just note it and it makes me smile.
Finding stuff I really like from the Dope: Carl Sagan, Firefly, Sam Harris, knitting sites, Ironic Times…thanks, y’all.
Sounds like someone needs to feel loved. Hey, where’d the goat go?
(Yeah, I’m with you on this one.)
I thought of another, that’s probably been mentioned but I missed it.
Posters who don’t seem to realize that the reply box will automatically add
line breaks for them, and it will do it a lot better than they can, since it can
add them intelligently, so that regardless of someone else’s window size,
they will get the lind breaks at the edge of the post window. It’s just really
annoying to see text like this.
Me too. It happens everywhere, and (as others have said) it lessens the impact. I’ve tried on other boards to ask for ONE favorite book, movie, whatever, and nobody can do it!
Of course it’s hard to choose just one, but when you do, your choice carries some weight.
I really hate it when the same answer is repeated several times in a thread because the poster didn’t bother to read the entire thread before posting.
(Apologies to both Sternvogel and pravnik (posts 78 and 80) for this one.)
Seriously, that really does bug me. I’ve never seen another forum website where this happens so much.
That wasn’t what I was referring to, though. I was referring to the immediately engaging in the posting practice that another poster just said annoyed them. Also, I really hate it when people post something that’s already been posted because they didn’t bother to read the whole thread first.
Ok, this is getting confusing. I was engaging in the practice that annoys Sterngovel (and myself) by reposting an answer seemingly because I had not read the whole post. Because it is obvious that I had read the whole post, I was just posting to amuse myself at the annoyance of others, which annoys you, pravnik. The whole idea seemed really clever to me at the time… :smack:
also I really hate it when people post som… oh, nevermind.
It was a joke, meant to illustrate the practice I was talking about, using your own joke as an example. Sorry, I probably should have used a smilie. 
What really chafes me, though, is when people post something that’s already been posted because they didn’t read the whole thread.
I find it irksome when someone starts a thread by listing some things that are grouped together, and asking for more suggestions. Then almost all the subsequent posts, rather than making useful suggestions, are criticizing, mocking, or nitpicking about certain items on the list.
Example:
OP:
I’m trying to think of TV shows involving warbling widget watchers. The only ones that come to mind are “Waggly Williams and the Worldwide Web” and “Wow, Watch That Wubsy Widget!”
The next post:
You’re an idiot. It’s “Waggly Wiggums and the Worldwide Web.”
The next post after that:
“Wow, Watch That Wubsy Widget” doesn’t count because it started as a radio program.
Yet another post:
In neither of these shows did any of the widget watchers ever warble. They wailed and woowooed, but no one with half a brain would mistake this for warbling.
Yeah, that is annoying. As is the previously noted trend to criticize someone else’s tatse as somehow subhuman simply it doesn’t match their taste.
Posted before in this thread in several different ways, but it still bears repeating: Your taste is not the gold standard everyone else is held to. What you think is or isn’t funny is simply your opinion. Same with great music vs worthless noise, actors, TV series, the fucking movie no one else “gets” because of how “meaningful” it really is, Stephen King and Michael Chricton vs Francis Bacon and Hemmingway, etc… taste is taste. No one’s taste is wrong, it’s just DIFFERENT. Get over your fat assed worthless selves already. (Applies to me, too)
pinkfreud, that’s the hazard of playing around in Nitpickers Central here. We tend to pick a lot of nits. But yeah, it does get irritating some times.
I just stopped doing this, prompted by this post! I’m not sure why I even started, actually. I think it was a carry-over from a previous board. I didn’t think much of it, until I read your post. Then I realized that I don’t like it either …
Okay, here’s my $.02 on this one. I do it once in a while, but usually only when I’m in a thread that’s turned personal. For instance, if a Doper posts to say that they’ve just broken up with a boyfriend, I might say something sympathetic and put “zoogirl” or “zoo” at the end in the same way that I’d sign a note to a friend.
If the post/conversation touches on something that has has a deep impact on my own life, for instance losing a child, then I’ll sign it “Ann” as a way of connecting with the poster on a deeper level. I don’t do it often or lightly.
My own worst habit is dragging my favorite performer into every conversation. i know I’m being annoying, but I still do it. It’s hard not too, especially since I’m also in a tribute band and that’s a big part of my social and work life. Be glad you don’t get me IRL too - it’s even worse!
On a related note, there’s also the offenderati, who seem to delight in derailing threads when they see a perceived slight.
*
“So this ugly fat woman talking on a cell phone cut in front of me at the supermarket tonight …”
“WHY DID YOU HAVE TO POINT OUT SHE WAS FAT? WHAT DIFFERENCE WOULD IT HAVE MADE IF SHE WAS PRETTY AND THIN? YOU’RE SAYING THAT ALL FAT PEOPLE ARE RUDE AND UGLY! BEING OVERWEIGHT DOES NOT MAKE YOU UGLY! SIZEIST!”*
Some seem to go out of their way to find a slight in a post where it just doesn’t exist.
Another peeve is the Doper who throws out the inevitable example of the one-in-a-thousand exception in response to a thread or post that mentions a group or subculture that seems to share a universal trait.
*“I went to a Linux user’s group meeting, and the room was filled with almost nobody but men; it was a huge sausage party. About half of them had ponytails or neckbeards, and so many seemed like socially inept geeks.”
“Well, I know a very social, very attractive woman who works in pharmaceutical sales and has a part-time gig as a bikini model, and she runs Gentoo Linux on her home computer, so your statement about Linux users generally being geeky is false.”*
But . . . I love those! They always make me laugh.
When you’re using parentheses (like this), the shift key is crucial, 9so you don’t do this).
That makes sense, so that’s cool. I meant the people who habitually sign their posts with their real name. It’s not a big deal, but it bugs me a little. (Though, after reading Arjuna34’s post, I feel bad about calling post-signers dummies. I didn’t mean it personally, honest!)
Excessive nitpickery.
Most of my posts are about 500-1000 words. I generally don’t post unless I’ve got a well-formed opinion on something, and that means that I’ve got a decent amount to say about it. I can’t count the number of times that someone has tried to argue based on semantics only, offering no new facts or substantial correction to what I’ve actually written, or how many times someone has picked out one phrase of a 1000+ word post to “correct.” How about the other ten paragraphs, bucko? Got a problem with those too? I know some people live to argue, but that’s like criticizing a movie based on the color of the tie a character was wearing in one scene.
Never being able to give a general statement.
This is a subset of elmwood’s observation. You basically can’t say anything without someone saying that Alpha doesn’t apply because in Circumstance Sub-sub-sub Prime on Tuesdays in the southern hemisphere during a full eclipse of the sun, it’s different. That’s a different kind of nitpickery, and it gets old really fast.
I still say it is rude to say “hell” when you’re asking about a cultural reference. If you don’t know who some actor was, or you never heard of some military operation, okay, you don’t. No shame in not knowing, and by all means ask: we’re here to fight ignorance. But a line is crossed when you say, “Who the hell is Joe Blow?” or “What the hell was the Tet Offensive?” It implies that you think everyone else is babbling about something or someone inconsequential, and you’re there to cut through the bullshit. Not. cool.