(no subject)

[twincityhacker]

I want to talk, but there are no words. Just fear, and bordom, and inexplicable rage. How could you quantify that? Put it in little boxes that people have taken down, and made smaller than theier true meaning. Terrible - was once a mighty word. Lives lost, buildings burned. Now it's terrible that there's no ketsup.

There's nothing left. No shelter, as the words used to convey between ideals have been hijacked, torn asunder. No communication = brain death.

What's the point? Why go out, when you pass me by you don't see me. You don't notice your surodings, think of what is said. You flout, and flaunt, and give no care to anything. WHY?

And it goes on, untranslateable. All dust, as dust it shall return. Paper given over to the ephermal electronic. To heat death. There are no ruins of bytes, when civilation falls, what shall be the records of "I was here"?

Thank you for your time. Time. Time. Thyme. Rhyme.

Comments

[commanderteddog.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, but communication is fluid. Otherwise, we wouldn't be typing in English. The power of words isn't in what they mean but how they're used, as any language can be broken down into a very mechanical structure. Grammer.

As to where grammar came from, that's something we still don't understand. Very few people care to think about it. Communication is so mystical that many popular theories as to why we even have a language tie back to creationism.

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

It's not the fluidity, it's that - maybe I'm just being parinoid - purposfuly takeing the meaning out of words. Like there used to be levels of good and bad and middling, and now grace and horror are next-door neighbors.

That's not even getting into the fact that people almost never say what they mean, but that's going on for thousands of years and humans have survived so far.

[commanderteddog.livejournal.com]

I'd be more paranoid about the loss of natural language all together. Ever see... I think it was the movie Stargate, where the common people are kept under control by forbidding them from reading and writing? Losing a language or causing a language to stagnate is a bigger risk.

Even if words change, new words can be created to express complex phrases and emotions, as can be seen in other languages (there's a word in French that translates to "Going around in circles", for an example). The problem begins when you start enforcing the usage and forbidding language to expand naturally. Fictional examples would be 1984's Newspeak and the plot of Snow Crash, which involves controlling large groups of people by stripping away their higher communication skills. For a real life example, take a peek at Quebec's language laws. This would be true censorship, which is the big scary word that everyone is scared of, but nobody ever agrees on what it is.

I don't know if you were around in the MST3K fic community when the MiSTing bubble burst back in 2002, but the end of the community in fanfiction.net was dealing with a related problem. A lot of bans at FF.N went through at this time, like all MST3K fic, NC-17 fic and Real People fic. There was an end of the MiSTing fandom that screamed out "Censorship!" and stormed off to their own little corner where they created tons of NC-17 fics and MiSTings in protest. It was an extreme case of missing the point completely; censorship was not about preventing a person from writing about gore, sex and the extremes, but rather trying to control everything on a whole. I recall ranting to Amanda Vaughan a lot about that.

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

So what I'm trying to describe is a stagnation of language then? Like Newspesk, only it's not the number of words being cut down, it's the number of possible meanings that exist. Or something. I think it's just all parinoia though.

While I've never gotten all the way though of Stargate, and Snow Crash is on my reading list, I've been looking at the Quebec language laws. Which while their logic hurts my brain, I want to go there with the US English Only brigad to show them what comes of language policing.

While I wasn't part of the MST3K community when the ban went though - I joined sometime around November/December of that year - I do remeber the ban, and hurridly trying to archive fics.

I think FF.Net is trying to bend overbackwards to avoid being sued, and is just succededing in making their userbase angry. Like this complete nonsense on how they had to switch to a diffrent rating system, as the one that FF.Net was using before is owned by the motion picture association. So, IMHO, it's outside forces trying to control the fans by way of FF.Net - only it doesn't work.

[commanderteddog.livejournal.com]

Yeah. More or less the forced stagnation of language or at least steps towards it. I imagine the results would be like what happens when you try to stop natural functions of the body: it all blows up.

FF.N was avoiding being sued for the most part. Thus the crack down on NC-17 as not to upset parnets of childern visting the site, and on RPF since that's a very gray area, etc.

The MiSTing issue was a different problem. Some idiot named Daughter of Darkness claimed she caused the ban by complaining about the MiSTings, but honestly, no one really knows for sure what happened. The fear of being sued by fanficcers is really silly.

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

Oh, man I completely forgot about Daughter of Darkness. That reminds me more of how FF.net has more recently banned parodies and script fic. I mean, that's just being controling for no reason.

[hideyuki-tah.livejournal.com]

u r rightin gewd

lolz, mispayc


Really though, you've just got to ignore the inexplicable downfall of linguistics in main stream society and revel in it when you've got the chance to use big words like linguistics and austentacious. And Leonard Part 6. Wait, that was a movie...

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

I have a list of words that I want to use in conversation, like defrenenate, eschew, amblivilence, and peripatetic.

Though one could talk about Leonard Part six in the most austentacious and haughty manner possible. Such as talking about the esotric meanings of how the main charecter ties his or her shoes, for instance.

[viralmemory.livejournal.com]

I believe that there are days when it is our turn to be Observer, the third party. Then it's our job to find the words, to make up the words, if we have to. To make the record permanent as possible. If there is nothing to observe outside ourselves, then it's time to record what's within. No right words or wrong.

I agree that some words are losing power. They don't mean what they used to, because we don't use them the way we used to. Words are so fluid, though, that's why they're so much fun.

[msp-hacker.livejournal.com]

I think in this case when I wrote, "right words" I couldn't and still can't find the words to express what I ment and feeling. So there aren't any wrong words in this case, just words that more fully express the content than others.

And I'm not afraid of fluidity, it's just the words that I was thinking of were all beinging to mean the same thing, and no new words had moved in to communicate what those words had ment. A meaning vacuum, of a sort.

[viralmemory.livejournal.com]

too true