Hey cyber people. I appreciate the emails from people asking me where I have been and why I stopped writing. I'm so sorry but I do have an excuse. I became addicted to something worse than cocaine and heroine combined. It's also embarassing since I've been one of the harshest critics of all those guys who get hooked on some kind internet-wide science fiction game where 50,000 people combat forces of evil (literally each other) senselessly day and night for 7 months.
Anyway the doldrums of our 8 month winter in northern France led me to discover the wordreference forums, the greatest thing for language buffs since the invention of the bilingual dictionary. There are thousands of people from all over the word creating threads on vocabulary, idioms, translations, linguistics, grammar in any language in the world. Got a doubt, it will be resolved. Literally, wordreferece offered to me on a silver platter everything I ever wanted to know about language but never knew I did. The site is amazing. I guess it's like putting a little boy in an endless warehouse full of toys when previously the poor thing only got one little tiny gift each year for Christmas. Moreover he gets instant playmates who strangely enough do not find his interests so weird at all! Who knew he was not alone in the world? He thought he was odd for being excited about the imperfect subjunctive!
Unfortunately, sooner or later Wordreferencing becomes hell. 24 hours a day is not enough time to spend on this site. There are ten subject discussions being created about every minute, many of which you know something about, others maybe not, but all are interesting enough to read and comment on. Members are actually encouraged to give answers on everything too. As they say, we are all participating in the creation of the biggest language encyclopedia in history. It must be perfectly complete for posterity. As such, in the celebration section, members are constantly being given awards. Mr. Salamander wrote his 10,000th post today! Hurray! Tomorrow, is Miss Crumpets birthday so we've made this new thread just for her! She wanted to know the names of all Russian cakes, so here we go! Yay!
For some unknown reason, members get promoted to the status of Moderator. This gives them endless power to wield over other members. Mods get to enforce the WR rules and can comment on all posts or eliminate them at will! And beware! They can also choose to ban you forever from the form too. Soon you will get those private messages from mods asking you to prove this and that detail about yourself, or to admonish you for breaking continually rule number 16, one you never knew existed, and quite honestly it is of so little relevance to anything in daily life, it's absolutely pathetic.
Members also flock together in small little cliques called tagger groups. You see them waiting to pounce on anyone who enters into their circle. Worse yet, they often have blind conviction in their philosophy and will shun posters who dare to disagree. For example, a shocker and breaker for members of XX group are the circumstances in which interrogative words such as "dónde" "cómo" "cuándo" should or should not bear an accent mark!? Say what? Some gangs will kill for principles won't they? Other times groups just take offence to your mere presence in a forum you haven't been invited to. That's not a rule, by the way. Just imagine for a moment that a native French speaker goes into the German-Spanish forum and dares to comment on the best translation of a proverb from one language into another. Be you right or wrong, excuse me, but who invited you to our German-Spanish party? You'll find these mods particular harsh as they try any way possible to get rid of you. Ha ha ha!
In a nutshell, wordreferece can be great... but it has all the inconveniences of an addiction to a recreational drug, plus the hurt of a high school dance where you can't sit at a certain table or run for homecoming king... just because... that's the way it is, mate. Finally it turns into senseless clicking on a machine far worse than a game boy because... face it... you are just mechanically refreshing the same site over and over again... hoping for who knows what... a new translation? Winning some stupid dispute about grammar? Getting an honor? But guess what? Guess what? You'll be answered when and if the someone decides to carry on, and only if a mod or a clique or someone else don't zap you out. Certainly, it's just another clear example of a terrible second reality addiction just waiting to prey on someone living in a dark northern rainy and sad climate where Persephone has been damned to Hades until April at least. I admit I succombed...
Yet, now I'm free. I sent wordreferencing to hell and deleted their cookies from my hard drive. Yes!! I've got an extra two hours per day. So, now I can get back on track and start writing again. It's going to be more free-style impromptu writing this time. I've seen writing too much as a task to refine and polish, which is a major deterent. It must be fun! Anyway, these are my two of my resolutions for 2012.
Happy holidays people, I'm back! Enjoy yourselves! I wish you all the best for the new year. Then get on your resolutions too!
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment