They Never Listen
So the other day I went to France, right, and let me tell you, I couldn’t understand anything that anybody was saying. It was all fromage this and quel horreur that, and no matter how much they said, they just kept saying more, and let me tell you, it made no sense whatsoever. A few times I tried to get them to clarify what they were saying to each other, but they only looked at me funny and kept blathering on using their terrible, opaque words.
So finally, I quite reasonably told them, “Look. I’ve got an idea. How about you stop using all those silly words that you’ve built up over the last few thousand years and use the words that I’m more familiar with? Wouldn’t that be so much better? Then I could understand what you were saying to each other!”
Sadly, they kept speaking French. I wonder why.
May 14th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
Thanks for the snark, man. You’re really a wonderful contributor to the culture.
May 15th, 2007 at 10:46 am
Hell, it was worse in India. They wouldn’t even speak one set of funny sounds. They had like, hundreds. So everywhere I went the funny sounds were different. How was I supposed to communicate when the sounds change from community to community?
May 15th, 2007 at 2:56 pm
Thank you. I was afraid I was the only one.
May 20th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
Fred, I think we’ve hashed this out else-server. Forge requires Forgespeak, and the users there should not be expected to stop using it when somebody wants to join but doesn’t want to learn the lingua franca. Story-games does not require Forgespeak, and nobody should expect anybody to be fluent in it to participate there. Large numbers of internet-people are incapable of distinguishing differences between sites, and want to apply one standard to everything, usually “We should go with what I’m most comfortable with.” I’m of the firm opinion that different sites have different standards, and participation at any site requires acceptance of that site’s standards.
So I’ll talk with you, without jargon, at story-games, man.