Poseur pogrom
Two anecdotes.
Number 01
Every once in a while on the radio, the traffic report pilot will complain about some atrocity being committed by a bad driver, or drivers.
It could be driving on the shoulder during a show-stopping highway accident, or people blatantly violating the all-way stop rule when the traffic lights are toast and there's not a traffic officer in sight, or driving with a fridge in the back seat with half of it protruding into another lane.
The complaints, while momentarily distressing, are ultimately futile, because either they are not listening (likely), don't care (highly probable), or they are clueless (more probable than you think). And really, all it takes is a bit of stress or switching back to daylight standard time to turn at least a sane driver into a stoned one. This is the reason, among others, why we have car insurance.
Number 10
This one's a bit more current. For reasons unknown to even me, I continue to subscribe to the firehose that is the AnimeNano unfiltered feed [1]. And today being Remembrance Day here and variations elsewhere, a couple headlines come up wishing everyone a "Happy Veterans' Day."
At the time of that entry going online, in some unspecified place on this planet, someone was missing the point. They probably still are.
I suppose that we should be happy in a sense, that we are not all speaking one of German, Italian, or Japanese [2], if that's what your parents told you. But the day is not to celebrate the fact that the Triple Entente beat "armisticed" the Triple Alliance in 1918, or that the Axis surrendered unconditionally in 1945.
I mean, you see veterans, some in wheelchairs, crying during Amazing Grace. Why? Ain't nothing to be sad about, nope. Be happy that you're still (largely?) intact when some of your pals aren't, right? Oh and thanks for showing up.
Not in my indeterminable lifetime, could I ever imagine going up to any soldier past or present, and wishing him or her a happy Veterans' Day.
But it's okay to do so on the internet, and that is why we — the pilot, myself, and those guys — are just tempests in a teapot.
Or as some others would say, shitstorms in a toilet.
And I'm not astounded, although allow me to feign it anyway, that people would completely misread the intent and spin this community's (whatever passes for one) equivalent of Hot Or Not into a mass spectator sport of schadenfreude. I am horrified that people don't actually RTFA around these parts.
Not really, but allow me to feign said horror anyway.
The volunteer Word Police had it coming though, with an opening salvo of fighting words. Wrapped around a flimsy and frivolous premise, mind you, and not quite up to the righteous indignation typically espoused by WAH [3], but it matters not, because once people have had their faces rubbed in with P12 sandpaper, fight's on.
Where there is a fight to be had, the fight promoters are sure to follow. And people cheerleading other people into conflict is at least as old as those folks who thought they could beat the sausages out of the Germans and be back home in time for Christmas.
Apparently the lack of literacy has caused the WP to issue a statement reiterating that they are not in the business of reviewing resumes blarghs, but rather the character of its writer(s); that this is not J-Blog Idol, or Can You Write Better Than a Fourth Grader?, but rather The Great Poseur Hunt of 2009.
Note: Hot Or Not doesn't have comments, presumably by design. And so neither should the headquarters of WorPol. Mete out your justice from the unassailable fortress of WordPress, and be satisfied that you think you are making the world a better place. As opposed to, like, making money.
I don't mind poseurs, as long as they don't impose on me. And in other areas, I am a poseur myself. For instance: I think FireBatHero is a great pro StarCraft player because of his victory celebrations; I'm partial to trance but have never set foot in a club, let alone swung glow sticks around; I like that watered down Ibiza stuff, and continue to be e-tarded for Robert Miles.
Also, beer is terrible, wine is sour, shots are too hard, coolers are A-OK, Paul Graham is my hero and everybody should write like he does.
But before this turns into more of a parody than it already is, maybe we ought to step back and look at the big picture.
The big picture
Yep, that's about right. We should all be taking a nap, and then firing ze missiles!
Not an acceptable answer? Fine. There are at least two aspects to something approximating one.
The one-th
The first is that it should be obvious by now that there are a near limitless supply of poseurs in the world, most of them oblivious. And I'm not talking about the aggregate global poseur population, but the English-Speaking Otaku-Poseur-Blargh specific one. You weed one out, another replacement is brought to the front, ready to fork over their parents' money.
How do you put a dent in that, without the Maxim and a couple howitzers?
If you were sufficiently outraged, you'd be figuring out ways to take the money away, before Big Brother Business does. This global Repression has done a lot of the leg work; time to step up.
But before you spring into action, let me suggest that the Otaku-Poseur Head Tax Act of 2009 is not going to fly. Society this side of the planet has advanced at least that far.
The tooth
Last time I checked, English has been stealing words from other languages since at least 1999, not to mention cannibalizing its own to form new meanings like:
And remember folks, you can't trademark a number, but a mispelling is fine too.
So this great language of ours is constantly stealing from others, repurposing itself, or just making stuff up. Good deity, could it possibly be that we stole "poseur" from the French?
I mean, it's got the letter U in it!
It's okay, because everyone steals stuff from the French, right? Not to mention from the Greeks and Italians, back when they liked to call themselves Romans, and Latin was not decomposing.
But the Japanese are off-limits. Oh no, can't lay a finger on them since that would be like, in contravention of UN statutes on language assault. Because the Japanese don't repurpose, make stuff up, or outright steal words.
What in blue blazes is a Discman, and why is a word related to citizenship a best-selling car.
Quick, fetch me EngSoc. I'm afraid that this can only be settled with fisticuffs and broken bottles of Victory Gin. But don't worry, we'll beat the fish out of those Japanese right quick and should all be home in time for Christmas turkey, cranberry sauce and apple pie.
A modest proposal
All of this has happened before, and all of it will happen again.
Case in point: The Stonecutters. Learn from their example! How about you few, noble, and proud make a new cool kid's club called "The Ancient Mystic Society of No Otaku-Poseurs." I think it's easier that way, since there are fewer pure 1337's and much more dum [sic] n00bs [sic].
And you can paddle each other all day to prove to yourselves that you're more hardcore than the rest of us peons.
P.S.
[1] I also have AB Antenna, although it clearly has scalability issues and is thus not a firehose. More like a partially blocked faucet.
[2] Although I suspect many of you wouldn't mind the latter.
[3] The WAAAH Conjecture: WAH will always come across as be wrong, even if he might be in the right. Solution: Schwarzenegger's Algorithm.