Conversation

[madamesilverspurs]

It started with Dad. He was a master of the English language and expected his offspring to be the same. Spelling was big. Grammar reigned supreme. At dinnertime we were expected to participate in the conversation, and we incurred penalties for infractions; split an infinitive, no dessert for you! Notes and letters were corrected and sometimes graded, and when we grew up and moved away Dad wondered why we never wrote to him. It was during the last short years of his life that we realized he'd never been allowed to be right when he was a kid, that 'his rules' were his way of making up for that.

Then there was the fellow with whom I cohabited for a while. Very bright, great dancer, well-read, droll wit, and quite proud of his talent in stopping conversations to point out a mispronunciation or to 'suggest' a better word; he sometimes bragged about his ability to thus annoy people for the sake of timing how long it would take for them to get angry. The cohabitation ended when I outplayed him at Scrabble and he threw the Scrabble board at me.

One of our local Dems is given to the erroneous thinking that no conversation is complete without him at its center. He invites himself to sit down at any table where he recognizes someone, then proceeds to tell the invadees that they can resume their conversation after he leaves but that he has better information that they need to hear, anyway. Some days he is ubiquitous, showing up in even the most obscure restaurant or coffee shop.

Also at one of those local coffee shops we were having some lively conversation one afternoon. In comes a woman trailed by four 10-year-olds. She parks them at the table next to ours, gets their drinks, and they all proceed to open their Bibles and begin a study session. We continue our discussion, which earns us her highly indignant glares; clearly, we were expected to 'adjust' our conversation to suit her and she got mightily huffy and started speaking louder to her charges in an effort to drown us out.

At DU we have thread hijackers. Honest discussion isn't what they're after. Instead, they pick unnecessary fights, pick nits, change the subject of the discussion, dispute words, insist on re-defining terms already agreed upon and generally manage to draw lots of attention to themselves. Whether their intent is to disrupt or to self-aggrandize, their effect on conversation is toxic. To put it succinctly, thread hijackers suck.

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[KittyWampus]

1. True. And it's too bad, cause some issues like Health Care are very important.

Someone posted a thread like "Health Care Bill Doesn't Limit Deductibles" and it was immediately inundated by DU'ers simply snarking in agreement.

The FACT that there are limitations wasn't brought up until further down.

And when the DU'ers adding the snark saw that, they then lied about how much the deductibles might be.

[Hekate]

2. Sadly true, and the toxicity is driving people away. KnR.

[JohnnyLib2]

3. Truly a turn-off, isn't it?

[gratefultobelib]

4. Excellent!!!!