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OK, rant. Maybe.
I was weary of failing to find info that I needed via "official"
channels, only to find what might be what I needed in yet
another forum full of illiterates. Then it's an odyssey and
a trial to parse what they're saying into useful comparative
data (when shopping for a device) or config-and-operate
instructions (when one has bought a device and now needs
to make it work).
Considerable apropos info seems to come from posters who:
- seem only marginally acquainted with real English (I can't speak to the quality of forums in other languages because the only ones I seek out are English and French)
- the proud possessors of the bleeding-edge, most expensive phones, having recently upgraded from what was bleeding edge just a few months ago, and often with signature blocks listing their other expensive phones that they still own and sometimes use.
My limited imagination was filling in the blanks as to the sort of person who conversed in the manner described, and who could afford to acquire new top-line consumer devices every few months. I suppose it's quite possible that the majority were actually trust-fund babies (thus accounting for the flow of pocket money) who were engaging in street-speak as a way of fitting in... but nobody in the entire forum was actually a street person or gang-banger, they were all just poseurs bluffing each other.
Recently, I read an exchange where somebody was getting answers he couldn't quite translate from somebody who wrote extremely badly. I recognized what I thought were some common English words, but spelled phonetically for some street dialect. The exasperated OP asked if the responding helper could please turn on spell-check. The other person said he never turned it off. After a couple more posts, it turned out the fellow thought "No suggestion" meant the word was fine as he spelled it, where it actually meant the dictionary couldn't even hazard a guess as to what he'd typed.
"Fan-boyz" is just one of many spellings of an epithet that supporters of one camp use to describe supporters of another. It refers to the sort of people who post in (e.g. a Windows forum to trumpet the superiority of their Apple computer, or who slag whatever phone/brand is the current topic of query, because it's not the one to which they have a religious attachment).
The dearth of vendor-supplied product documentation is being addressed in strange ways.
I can see there being not much to say about a toaster. But a handheld computer that's more powerful and complex than last year's desktop?
An additional note. When I was comparing brands and models, looking for reviews and comparison charts, etc., I generally found the most info on third-party sites and on forums that had no obvious connection to any of the major brands. Maybe they'd tried it and their attempts at control and moderation were rejected by the very people who dig in and find all the juicy knowledge about the products. Maybe some of them never even tried to host forums under their own auspices. Maybe they do have 'em, but they appear so far down the Google search results that 99% of seekers-after-info will never find them.
Maybe I'm ranting again.
From: Kat Kuvinka [mailto:katkuvinka -at- hotmail -dot- com]
Sent: January-16-12 5:54 PM
To: McLauchlan, Kevin; techwr -at- genek -dot- com; suzchiles -at- gmail -dot- com
Cc: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: RE: documentation going away
Whether they were characterizations, generalizations, or outright fanatasies, your bizarre rant about drug-dealers, thieves, and fan-boyz (wth?) had little to do with the subject and came across as political.
>>
> BINGO!
>
> Spend a bit of time on a bus in my area, and you'll despair for the future of the language, and of white kids from the burbs.
>
> Maybe she was objecting to my poor opinion of drug dealers?
> Drug users?
>
> We have those here in Canada.
>
> One thing that we DON'T have here in Canada is Martin Luther King Day.
> But even if we did........ ?
>
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