Dudes, seriously? If you’re this bad at spelling, run your damn memes by someone you know who can spell before posting them for all of the Internet to see.
Dudes: The word is spelled “therefore.” With an “e” at the end. Also, center your text properly! In addition, I would suggest that you 1) lay off the rape jokes and 2) try to make even a little bit of sense.
Dudes: it’s “than,” not “then.” They are different words, with different meanings, and you used the wrong one.
Also, that first sentence is a mess. Change “or have internalized misogyny” to “nor do they have internalized misogyny.”
Once again, a feminist has to do the work that MRAs should be doing themselves. At least this time they spelled “misogyny” correctly.
As for you, dear readers: Feel free to discuss the arguments (or the spelling) of any of these memes. But you can use this as an open thread, too.
So it’s probably become obvious from my comments that I like both Japanese media and computer science, and I also like the intersection of those things. Specifically, Vocaloids. Be advised that this information is second-hand as I haven’t actually used them myself.
The original plan was essentially to make digitized versions of popular singer’s voices to let people basically make recordings of them singing songs without needing the actual singer to sing that song, and it actually started with an international collaboration, with the first recorded being English. By having the voice provider sing every phoneme in the language, possibly in multiple ways, they could get a voicebank that the Vocaloid software could then string together and edit to reproduce any song. Apparently it’s pretty easy to get it mostly right but making it actually sound human involves fiddling with lots and lots of numbers and is more an art than a science.
However, there was a blindingly obvious problem: if you were a famous singer, how much would you charge for making a Vocaloid voicebank using your voice? Before you answer, know that the Vocaloid software is a “virtual instrument” under Japanese law and if anyone uses the software to make a song they’ve got the copyright (at least as much of the copyright as if they’d sung it themselves).
And so it was that in 2007 one of the participating companies had a better idea: why make an imitation of a celebrity when you can just make a celebrity? So they approached Saki Fujita, who at the time liked singing but did not make money at it*, and asked her to be the voice provider for Hatsune Miku**, written with kanji generally translated as “First Sound of the Future”, and with an associated anime-style personification.
http://ggsoku.com/wp-content/uploads/3-Hatsune_Miku.png
Comparison:
And because at some point it became the future, not existing doesn’t stop Hatsune Miku from appearing on stage at live concerts with packed auditoriums of fans chanting and waving glowsticks*** while she(English-speaking fans generally use gendered pronouns) dances and sings. The technical details are complicated and poorly-explained, but it somehow involves placing multiple projectors behind a nearly-transparent screen to create an illusion of a 3D image, so with the correct positioning and lighting it looks like a freestanding hologram. The company that sells the software has control over use of everything but the voice itself in some manner, but Japanese copyright law is a bit different and fanwork culture is very different and this means less than it would in the US.
I should also note that they don’t really have official characterizations; they’re less characters than they are virtual actors and song producers will put them in a song based on how their voice matches more than overall characterization.
Anyways, Miku was a huge success and a bunch more followed. First the Kagamines, Rin and Len, written with kanji for mirror sound, Rin is a teenage girl and Len is a teenage boy and they have the same voice provider. They are officially specifically not necessarily twins because they make for a great love song duet. Megurine Luka was the first bilingual Vocaloid, a 30-something woman with a strong voice and a clear English voicebank; with their V4 voicebanks Miku and the Kagamines now have pretty good English, though Miku’s is still fairly heavily accented (Saki Fujita is working on it). Gaku and Kaito are male Vocaloids somewhere in the timeline. There’s a bunch more.
It’s also not exclusively confined to Japan; there’s Oliver the blond british cyclops (teenage boy), Maika and Bruno from Spain (middle-aged), and others. Maika was originally recorded in Spanish, but audio processing people worked their mighty sorceries and she has only moderately-accented English. There are also freeware UTAUloids.
One of the reasons I bring this up is because if anyone is curious, Miku is touring North America soon and tickets are available.
*She has since been able to put “Voice of Hatsune Miku” on her resume and now has a singing/voice-acting career, as well as coming back to help with updating voicebanks.
**Japanese names are written family name then given name. Technically you’re supposed to swap the order when writing in romanji but internet anime fans often don’t; I prefer not to when there are also western-order names in the same series. Anyways you’ll see both orders used online; Hatsune Miku is Japanese order.
***This is apparently just how Japan does idol concerts; I’ve seen video of Luka’s voice provider on stage and the audience is pretty much the same.
@Leda Atomica
No it doesn’t matter to me anymore, some times i argue for the sake of arguing and then it gets out of hand.
@kupo
That’s all for now and i’m not going to convert! anyone, relax.
I’ll admit it: I was never all that good at the grammar. Never have, and probably might not ever will be. I’m privileged as all get out, used to go to a pretty good school and I’ve gone and done made my life pretty worthwhile, I think.
Grammar Nazis are pure and insidious. There are people on the Youtube where when you say something, they’ll say back, “Hey! You misspelled ‘you’re’. That makes you a dummy!” and they won’t even pretend to reply to your argument. Now, I may not be the most intelligent man on the internet, but I think that my progressive worldview puts me a few hairs above “dummy”
Not only is grammar nazisim unperceptive and unargumentative, but it’s also, like other folks said here, racist, classist, ableist, and probably a bunch of other things I’m drawing a blank on right now. We cannot rule out the possibility that there are poor people of color who have been tricked by the MRA’s misogyny! If there’s one thing that I can say that I believe in, it’s that we should never, ever kick a dying puppy.
Thank you.
But how can the veterinarians then be running to save the puppies, since they’re running towards us and the windmill is behind them?
On the topic of mocking for spelling: I’m very much on the same page as others here.
If these dusty turnips want to make fun of people for being “less intelligent” or “less rational” than them, then they need to really use the spell-check, otherwise it completely destroys their argument about how much “more intelligent” they are than everyone else, especially us feeemales.
My mother’s dyslexic, and I have a mild form of dyslexia myself, but even I manage just fine. Ask Jackie, I’m helpless without a spell-check, hence why I insist that my browser has one.
Of course, browser spell-checkers aren’t infallible, there are some words they don’t know or aren’t aware of, but that’s when I use Google to double-check it and then click “Add to Dictionary”.
@Nequam: I’m glad to hear your dad’s doing better!
@Rhuu: I’m so sorry you have to deal with that with your family. It’s so hard to love someone who hates you for who you are, but still claim to love you.
And it is bullshit that an “all-knowing, loving” being would know that you’re going to be queer (my apologies if you don’t want this term applied to you) and then condemn you for it. This is a question I wrestled with myself when I was coming to terms with my sexuality. “Am I playing a game that was rigged against me from the start?” ect. It’s a terrible fate to give to anyone who has questions about their sexuality.
If it comes down to it, and you can’t come out to your sister before she flies out, you might want to wait until you’re in a public place to out yourself to her, that way she might not make a scene at least, and she’ll have time to swallow the situation and understand it before she does anything rash like disowning you or something.
It might also help to stand your ground a bit, and tell your family that you’re not going to hide who you are for their sakes, and if they don’t care for it, it doesn’t matter, because it’s your life and your sexuality, not theirs. It shouldn’t affect them in the slightest.
Only if you want to though. This is just what I’d do in that situation, and I’m not always the best at advice.
…I’ve never really noticed it.
But, like, you’ve seen ME without spellcheck.
It’s awful.
The Nazi veterinarians don’t care about saving the puppies. They care more about the biowarfare pigs.
Is “Arash” another way of saying “sealion”? Because damn, dude, you’re leaving a lot of sealion shit lying around.
And speaking as a leftist, Arash, your whole “regressive left” schtick is bullshit. The left is PROgressive, the right is REgressive. Count me in as one more person who is tired of your one-note noise and thinks that off is the direction in which you need to fuck.
http://cdn.someecards.com/someecards/usercards/1339426725154_9146065.png
Ok, so I probably shouldn’t have made this a sort-of open thread. I just figured that the sloppy spelling/proofreading of MRAs wasn’t really something that people would likely be interested in talking about in depth. And we were overdue for a new open thread.
I’ll go ahead and set up open threads in the more traditional manner, and make it clearer what’s expected in them. They’s basically for regulars, with no MRAs. trolls, etc. Open threads for personal stuff are also supposed to be argument-free zones — that is, regulars shouldn’t bring up stuff that’s likely to start an argument or bring too much other baggage to them.
Arash, you’re getting hostility on the religion is because you’re making a lot of sweeping generalizations on the subject that are essentially insulting to everyone who’s religious, much in the same way that someone going around telling everyone that they’re going to hell is insulting to atheists.
It’s fine to criticize particular religious people, or certain brands of religion, for being backwards/misogyistic, etc, in the comments here, just as it’s fine to criticize particular atheists, or types of atheists, for similar reasons. Today, for example, I wrote about two Christian dudes using a Bible passage to make a regressive, misogynistic argument about women in the military. And in the past I’ve written about Richard Dawkins’ crappy views on a lot of issues.
So neither religion or atheism is off the table as a subject for discussion or debate, but at the same time no one here is interested in debating whether religion is inherently irrational, or whether or not it needs to be “restrained.” That’s insulting to religious people. Actually, as an agnostic I find it a bit insulting as well.
If you find yourself unable to discuss the subject without making those sorts of sweeping generalizations or patronizing value judgments, then don’t bring up the subject. There are plenty of other places on the internet where you can discuss religion however you want to.
As promised i did not start anything related to regressive left:
@Bina
Your childish argument is full of historical and political illiteracy.
So USSR was”PROgressive”in its all glory?!
Suppression of dissent, shutting down the free speech and so on weren’t really progressive! but USSR is considered a leftist regime.
French Revolution was leftist (the first), but they achieved Declaration of the Rights of Man but also the Reign of Terror and many other unnecessary and barbarian bloodshed.
Do you consider their atrocities regressive?! then the left can be regressive, if you don’t then your Progressivism is fucking awful.
Ok David
It’s your site and its your rules, i won’t make any further trouble.
bye
@dust bunny
I agree with you that character traits should not be gendered, that the dichotomy is inherently sexist, and that femininity is an arbitrary, possibly statistically descriptive, but [should not be] normative, defining or limiting collection of character traits.
Sadly, this view sometimes gets shouted down, and expressing it can even result in vilification and accusations of transphobia. And to be fair some of the people who hold this view *are* transphobic–but many are not. I’ve seen a lot of nastiness and irrationality on both sides.
If it makes you feel any better, I know plenty of trans people, and others who fully support trans people, who hold this point of view, and are fighting back against the silencing tactics that are popular with a subset of activists.
Personally, I wish for a world where everyone can be who they want to be, in terms of their “presentation”–honestly, fuck gender norms. And if a person’s body map says one thing and their tender bits feel wrong to them and they want to modify them, that option should be economically and socially acceptable. Nobody should be shamed for being trans.
.
As for the spelling thing–I’ll just say this. Shaming somebody for poor spelling or idiosyncratic grammar that because they grew up poor, were under-educated, have cognitive disabilites, etc. is certainly wrong. It does not follow that it is always wrong to shame people for poor spelling and grammar. I simply do not believe that the people making these memes don’t know how to spell words that are central to their worldview, or, unable to spell those words, they aren’t capable of correcting errors after someone points it out.
This has nothing to do with “don’t participate in a movement if you can’t spell.” If you can’t spell, you can ask a friend to spot check–and you should. .
As somebody above pointed out, the sloppiness on display is evidence of sloppy thinking. That’s really what’s being mocked, imo.
Laziness on my part–shame away! But seriously, if my intention were to make a meme–which by definition is intended to be widespread–I’d at least review my first draft before sharing it.
I think David doesn’t want argument, so I’ll shut up now. I did want to clarify though, because I understand the objection. I lean toward “context over absolute prohibition”–but OMMV.
@Tragedy of the Commas, I love your nym–and your etymology. 🙂
@Paradoxical Intention: Thanks for the advice, I’ll definitely think on it. The nice thing with being in a large city is that if she is visiting it would be fairly easy to avoid her if things went south, haha.
Plus this is MY space, y’know? If anything happens, I can totally transit away with exactly 0 problems.
Edited to add: Sorry if the ‘open thread’ thing is sort of over, I actually wanted to post on the last one, but got nervous and erased everything I’d written.
Also, I took the survey for Imaginary Petal’s Otter! I wished there was a spot to explain our choices, because I would have ordered things slightly differently if I could explain why.
I also didn’t get sent to enter for any amazon gift cards, so I hope that didn’t mess up my response!
I don’t think that’s the issue at all. I’m an absolute demon for correct spelling and grammar with my students — but I don’t grammar-nazi people’s obvious typos and other mis-spellings when they’re simply writing comments on blogs or news sites.
However … Harrumph, clears throat. Anyone who’s designing a book cover, or an announcement for a poster to go on walls and noticeboards, or a kind-of-artwork-but-not-really meme or whatever, or other sign-writing type work is obliged to pay careful attention to their spelling. (And other things like omissions or duplications of words or word endings – very easy to do when the work requires attention to details smaller than whole words.)
There’s a huge difference between being nagged at for getting there and their mixed up in a blog comment and not checking or refusing to check the words in your art-type work that you expect others to use or re-tweet or cite or otherwise spread around for public consumption.
One’s trivial and ephemeral, almost private. The other is meant for public display and dissemination. That difference is significant in my view.
WWTH, Welcome back. Rhuu, sorry to hear you’re having a hard time of it. Guy, thanks for the post about vocaloids, cool stuff.
Arash, maybe you’re gone, but just fyi, I was among the people silently uninterested in and unhappy with your posts. I would have called you out if I were posting more, but it’s because of you that I was posting less. You made me feel uncomfortable saying anything about my own relationship with unbelief, and honestly uncomfortable showing my face after plighting my troth to movement atheism.
Chiomara, Do you live in Brazil? Or was that your boyfriend, or am I totally off-base?
@Orion
I am Brazilian, live in Brazil, and my German bf lives in Germany 🙂
Chiomara,
Much our old friend Fifth Sybilline, I have powerful friends at the UN.
A little bird told me that if someone wanted to find some Portuguese-language literature on gifted psychology or groups working on gifted issues in Brazil, they should ask
Eunice M. L. Soriano de Alencar, Ph.D., Professor Emerita of Psychology at the University of Brasília, Brazil
Nequam, glad your dad’s better!
Rhuu, feel free to post personal stuff on the open thread for personal stuff I put up earlier today! (And non personal stuff in any other thread of course.)
Ok, that AbFab gif above. Weird angle. It sort of looks like Eddie is sprouting from Patsy’s ass, cigarette and all. It took me a little while to even figure out that was Eddie back there and not some weird video glitch.
@ Imaginary Petal: Otterwards
I took the survey, and am interested in the results. Without giving away the specifics, I am really interested in the results of last part. I have reasons for each selection, but only a short period. I know if I have longer to think about it, ie in reality, I would have different answers. And – there are some considerations that would be more important in reality. The level of information given is pretty slim, but would be more obvious in reality.
To the others – take the survey. really easy and actually interesting. Took me about 5 minutes && don’t let the boilerplate disclosures on the first page throw you off.
OK I am now dying looking at the AbFab gif. It never occurred to me Edina was sitting like that behind Patsy.
Guy:
So what you’re saying is that this was a documentary?
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e3/Idoru_uk_cover.jpg
@Nequam
I’m so glad that your dad is doing better. I know that you’re breathing a little easier now.
And you rescue books?! Well done!
@dust bunny
Perfect–or even really good–spelling is by no means a requirement for a well-reasoned, insightful comment. In fact, good spelling has nothing at all to do with how good a piece of writing is.
That said, standardized spelling makes it easier to understand what a commenter is saying.
An instructor of mine told my class many years ago that a study (or maybe studies?) had been done of how people read writing with errors and inconsistencies in it. It was found that readers paused briefly at each error and inconsistency. So I try to make sure that my comments are error-free. But errors are going to slip through anyway.
No, I don’t belittle people who have trouble spelling unless they are hateful jerks. And if they are hateful jerks, I might start in on their punctuation and grammar too.
My boyfriend is not a good speller. But he’s a really good writer and funny too.
I’m not actually judgmental about MRAs’ spelling. But it’s terrific when they do misspell their communiques–as they so often do–because then I get to point out that they are not the omniscient, edgy superheroes they imagine themselves to be.