Like most Webonauts, my mail inbox fills up with crap ever so quickly. In fact, I have a habit of abandoning mailboxes for fresh, new, spam-free ones, then abandoning those when they get discovered by the robots & marketers (redundant?), but some emails strike me, in equal parts, as so offensive and ridiculous that they’re worthy of note. That I’m actually reprinting this one may or may not reflect brilliance on the part of the writer, but either way I couldn’t let a opportunity to slay these belligerents pass.
So stoked? Are you kidding me? When did it become acceptable practice for businesses to talk like absolute morons. This email, I must admit, got me rather upset, far more than I should have by, essentially, junk-mail. But why is this okay? I wish there were a little more intolerance online to the degradation of our language and our letters. When a society looses it’s ability to communicate effectively is when war, violence, and chaos begin. The anarchists who sent me this drivel should know better or be fired and replaced by someone who knows better.
Anyway, being a writer, I thought it best to simply rewrite it, instead of getting angry and complaining unproductively.
Dear Seth,
We think you’re an absolute fucking moron. But we have brand new servers for you to host your useless crap. Unfortunately, the fourteen year-olds who run those servers have gone on strike due to the fact that we won’t let them play Rockband, so instead we’ve had them write our letters for us. Sorry for any inconvenience.
Leave the money on the table.
Have you considered Subscribing to all of this madness?
You’re right about the email, of course, it’s stupid and useless and meant to appeal only to the lowest common denominator; it is, however, taking advantage of language in it’s true function - that is, as a flexible, dynamic tool for communication.
Language is not - and should not be - set in stone, it changes, it evolves and it should change and evolve. If we don’t like the way it’s changing than we should try to apply our own brand of selection-pressure in order to change it in what we consider to be the proper direction of progress.
My method is to spell and write as cleanly as possible; to be coherent and intelligible in my writing, that others might learn by example - or at least see the advantage to that kind of writing. I even maintain proper punctuation, syntax, spelling and capitalization in my text-messages, regardless of the extra effort that might entail.
As far as popular expressions are concerned, my latest kick is to use older expressions and putting unnecessary emphasis on them, in order to seem so far out of the loop as to appear parental. It makes me laugh.
Yeah, certainly I don’t wish to stifle any evolution or growth in our language, particularly as North American English grows into it’s own dialect, but if the change deters communication instead of enhancing it, then it’s a different story. I have no issue with slang, but it has no business in a business letter.
Sure enough, I would have been thrilled to receive such an email and get an opportunity to learn a new word and expand my vocabulary.
I would agree with you, if they were a company that sold books and educational materials, but they’re a hosting company.