(post shortened)
What is the proper, or acceptable, etiquette and tone of an internet website post? Why do you consider formality to be wholly inappropriate? According to whom? You? The politically-correct word-police?
That was a typo for “registering”. Hope that clears up your confusion.
Every other post on the board might be a good place to begin your research.
One person doing the same thing over and over, so that many recognize it, does not meet the threshold for meme, IMO. It’s only if it catches on.
That is not correctly the definition of a meme. It is the definition of a successful meme.
I guess you could apply the term “meme” to every single personal idiosyncrasy, or, if you push it, everything a person says or does.
This will, however, leave you with a definition of “meme” that is about as practically useful as a bag of busted assholes.
Do you say a gene that doesn’t successfully get passed on for whatever reason is not a gene?
The idea is that ideas spread like genes. And a meme that doesn’t get passed on particularly well is still a meme. Some memes spread to very few places, some to many. The degree of propagation is not a determining factor in Dawkin’s coinage of the word. There’s no boundary of sufficient propagation which an idea must cross to be a meme.
Anyway, it’s not the label “meme” that is intrinsically interesting or valuable, it is the concept that ideas propagate analogously to genes that is meaningful.
As a metaphorical example, the genes of the stick insects living on that secluded island in the South Pacific are no less “genes” for being less successful at propagation than, say, the genes of homo sapiens.
Incidentally, all of these memes we’re discussing in the this thread are, in fact, quite successful owing to the fact that we’re discussing them and they are propagating on this message board and therefore being preserved on the Internet.
True.
However, even when talking (at least casually) about memetics and not lolcats, I think it’s a fair assumption that the term “meme”, in most contexts, should be understood as “somewhat successful meme”.
Otherwise, I could ask:
Which meme is the most delightful: Your neighbor’s curtains, the particular way I tie my left shoe, or **Knorf’**s habit of referring to “meme” as including “unsuccessful meme”, only to have to explain that what he means by “meme” is different from what everyone else refers to as a “meme”?
I could say that. But I would sound like a blithering idiot to everyone except you and me. Or, let’s face, to everyone but me. Or, to be perfectly honest, to everyone.
If you insist. But I would continue to argue that memes in this thread, which people are trying to call not memes, have in fact been quite successful. After all, here we are arguing about them and calling attention to them.
An irritating meme is still a meme.
It’s not my definition. It’s that of the man who coined the word and as written in respected dictionaries.
ETA: The occupation of the word by lolcats is a separate problem.
The only way to win is not to play!
Pretty much.
Oh, please do. It’s adding so much to the discussion.
Due to the lack of an official Roberts Rules of Order-type, or Miss Manners-type, or Politically-Correct-Word-Police Guide to Like Totally Acceptable Interweb Posting Stuff, Dude, I’ll go with my personal opinion which suggests that if an individual poster choses to follow a more formal posting style, it would be both proper, and acceptable, etiquette for an internet website post.
And annoying. Sometimes. Maybe. To some people.
What’s your point, anyway? Some people are annoyed by a particular thing. You aren’t. Whatever. Stop telling people what they should or shouldn’t find annoying. We’re not telling you to start being annoyed by it.
(Which really should be a word, in my opinion.)
That would be considered ironic. You know, like rain on your wedding day or a free ride when you’ve already paid.
My point has been to state my position, clarify my position when I believe others have altered or misstated it, and defend my position when I believe it’s necessary.
For example, I have not told anyone what they should or shouldn’t find annoying. My point is that the use of a normal valediction (ie. regards) is a normal valediction. I’m not annoyed by its use, and have seen no reason to change the status quo.
Also, it is not my position that a certain percentage of posters on the SDMB, for some unknown reason, hate the word “regards” irrespective of context, and take a black marker to it in every dictionary they find. That’s your opinion of the situation, not mine.
I do agree that people cling to ridiculous interpretations for incomprehensible reasons, when a perfectly sensible one is readily available. I have yet to hear a perfectly sensible reason for banning the valediction “regards”. It’s my position that keeping a normal, correctly used, valediction such as “regards” is perfectly sensible.
Oh, fine. We won’t ban it, then. You’ve convinced me.
Glad we cleared that up.
Good thing you stepped up to the plate. It was *this *close to getting banned.
The quarry one, easily. Luckily, I haven’t seen much of it lately. “Regards, Shodan” doesn’t bug me–I’ve become kind of blinded it to it from sheer repetition. Just looks kind of old-fashioned fuddy duddy and out-of-place to me in non-epistolary contexts, much like starting every post with “Dear [username]” would be.