I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been reading a thread and someone will jump in with a post saying, for example, “Nitpcik, that book wasn’t published until 1930, so it’s not a 1920s novel” when what is being discussed is whether the book is a good example of American literature or not.
Nothing else, no contribution to the discussion, nothing to say about the topic in hand, just the need to jump into a talk and correct something which actually probably doesn’t change anything being said anyway. For the people that do this, can you tell me why? Do you think you earn points or something? Do you think we’ll all stop and say “wow, there’s a poster that’s a cut above the rest of us wikipedia-reading hoi poloi”?
By all means challenge incorrect facts and positions in a discussion, that’s the whole point of a debate or discussion in the first place, but if that’s the only thing you’re going to bring to the discussion then why bother? You might as well not have posted anything. Then there are of course the (hilarious) instances when people nitpick things and are wrong. Who’s laughing then, eh?
No doubt someone will be along to criticise my spelling or grammar any minute… now.