*Your (by anon)

Here’s a cruel joke about refugees, there’s a complaint about Starbucks’s red holiday cups. Someone who’s going to move to Canada if Donald Trump becomes president. Someone else who’s randomly pissed about all the French flag profile pictures.

The internet is probably the most annoying thing ever. We learn to live with it. We glance at something stupid and then move on because it’s not worth the time.

But there’s one type of offender that never fails to make me facepalm in frustration. In such a busy world, why the hell do some commenters waste so much energy correcting people’s grammar?! Sure, I’m a lover of language. Yes, I think highly of people who know how to write well. But I see absolutely zero point in sifting through social media comments and pointing out whenever someone uses ur instead of your. We’ve all seen it happen:

Person 1: Even though im not religious, I dont see what’s wrong with people saying merry christmas. If that’s what u believe in and what makes u happy, then I appreciate u sharing it.

Person 2:

 *I’m

*don’t

*Christmas

*you

*you

*you

I honestly don’t understand why people feel the need to do this. Common courtesy is to listen when someone speaks, even if only in written form. Don’t read a person’s comment only to ignore his or her point completely and instead just insult their grammatical skills.

And why do people itch so badly to correct others in the first place? Surely it’s not to kindly help each other learn stellar writing techniques. In the end we all know that all Person 2 wants is to be regarded as more intelligent than Person 1.

But the victim usually doesn’t even need correcting. I mean, if they’re smart enough to write about complex ideas, surely they know the difference between ur and your. Their usage of the less generally accepted one was probably not an act of ignorance, but their own personal preference. And even if it was a mistake, it’s general knowledge that everyone makes them sometimes. LITERALLY EVERYONE.

        

Another point worth making is that the English language is changing drastically. Words that started out as slang are added to the dictionary every day. Hell, Oxford Dictionary’s word of the year is a fucking emoji. In today’s world if you know what ur means, then it will work just fine in conversation. Posting a comment on an article oddly enough does not require the same kind of language as a five-paragraph essay.

Language is flexible and always changing, like a living thing. Trying to stop it is not worth the battle. So, internet offenders, why not just back away from the comment section and go do something more worthwhile? Your giant, superior brain is not needed here.