Ten signs you’re an Internet moron

Why is it that the Internet is such a big moron magnet? And why is it that social news sites such as Digg seem to attrack more than their fair share? 

I’ve noticed a number of  annoying behaviors over the years that are a sure sign of Internet moronity (yes, that’s a real word), and most of them involve typing inane comments into blogs and social news sites.

If you find yourself breathlessly typing any of the following into your computer, I’m sorry to have to break the news to you, you’re a moron:

1. FTW – for the win.  It’s not the fact this is used, it’s the fact it’s used so much.  Examples include Apple FTW, iPhone FTW, Linux FTW, heck you can apply FTW to the end of just about anything but to me it’s just pointless.  It doesn’t really mean anything at all.
2. TFSU - Most of you should know what that means because I’m not going to repeat it here.  Not only is it profanity, it’s grammatically incorrect.  It’s hard to tolerate the use of profanity in any post but it’s even harder to tolerate something that is grammatically incorrect by nature.
3. Title says it all – this is used on Digg a lot to describe posts by using the title only.  It’s right 40% of the time, the rest of the time it just doesn’t make any sense and out of those, 90% weren’t worth reading.  Digg has become the trash heap of blog posts.
4. NSFW - Not safe for work. If it isn’t safe to be reading or seeing at work then it isn’t worth seeing at all.  If you want to look at NSFW pictures then there are a number of adult entertainment sites to suit your fancy but please only do so in the privacy of your own home.  That and the use of the abbreviation is annoying because it crops up too much.
5. Posts about the iPhone are all the rage and I promise you that on Digg right now there is at least one or two on the front page, talking about something that we already know.  Some have called the iPhone the “JesusPhone” which just doesn’t seem to make any sense at all.  What’s worse are comments that say “Dugg for using JesusPhone” how about being Buried for being just that pointless.
6. Dugg for title, again relating to Digg, some people just Digg a story for liking the title without actually reading it.  This is a simple concept, how about reading the story first and then deciding if it’s worth anything.  Well, almost everything on Digg isn’t worth reading but Digg users I suppose belong to the “special” crowd.
7. Best (something) ever.  It usually never is but I suppose it was to the person who posted it.  Trust me, to 90% of the educated crowd it isn’t.  These posts should be avoided at all costs.
8. ZOMG! – which is sarcasm for OMG.  I don’t mind certain phrases but ZOMG is just useless.  If you don’t like something just say that you don’t and move on.  Using ZOMG! to indicate something isn’t that great is just an insult to your intelligence, use your words there are somewhere in the area of 500,000 in the English language, not including scientific terms and on average a person is likely to know about 20,000 words, use them.
9. Text “speak” in posts, I’ve only seen this a few times but it was enough to bother me and probably some other people as well.  Or should I say “txt spk bthr sme ppl.”  It doesn’t matter if you’re writing from a phone or a computer, a few extra key strokes aren’t going to kill you.
10. Ur for you’re, honestly, is it that hard to type out “you’re” and along these lines “u” for you because typing two more letters is just so hard.  I can’t stand to read a chat transcript or post written entirely like that.  It’s nonsensical.

I’m sure there is more that bothers me but these ten things really stuck out to me as being annoying, so don’t do them because when you do you look like an Internet moron.

• Slashdot beats Digg at the tech news game by doing nothing
• Industry analyst: Digg is not always right
• Digg users don’t realize Digg is lame
• New service secures iPhone’s internet connectivity
• Popurls combines most popular sites on Internet