WHAT A PAIN

[backupdump002]

Before I go to bed, here's something I was thinkin' about in the shower:

Internet, how often do you find someone's typing habits affecting your opinion of them? I mean, there's the obvious ones where if someone speaks in near-incomprehensible chatspeak and fangirl Japanese or whatever then you avoid them like the plague, but what about smaller things like, say, what smilies they use, or whether they type in all lowercase, or if they "roleplay" while chatting (*grins*, *laughs*, *nods*, etc), or if they keyboard mash a lot.

For example, say someone used perfect grammar and never used smilies or caps or anything like that, and everything they wrote always seemed calm and thought-out. Would you think that person was intelligent, or would you think they were arrogant or unapproachable? What if someone else were to (in essence) say the exact same things that person said, only with a less serious typing style (caps, sarcastic italics/bolding, whatever). Would you think they were smarter or easier to talk to than the other person? What other quirks have an effect on you?

I'd offer my thoughts, but I don't wanna risk coloring someone else's opinion or anything, so I'll wait :V LET ME KNOW, I'VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT THIS A LOT FOR SOME REASON

Edit: Oh yeah, and what about you? Are there certain smilies you refuse to use because you feel they give off a certain impression, or anything like that? IF SO, THROW THAT IN TOO

Comments

[melaniedavidson.livejournal.com]

By art I just mean... oh, skill, making something more than the bare minimum.

and what they have to say is no less meaningful than anything else.

Yeah, but there are plenty of other people who have something meaningful to say and who write in a way that doesn't give me a headache to try to read. *shrug* Fine, if the internet only had a dozen people, it'd be harder to just ignore people--since where else could you go--but as it is, if they can't be bothered to make an effort, then I can't be bothered either.

ETA: And going back to IM I just noticed this but it's only consistent "i" that makes me run screaming for the hills bothers me there, not uncapitalized sentence beginnings... unless those sentences aren't the start of a comment. Post. ARGH I don't know what to call it here I'll just put an example:

person1: here is my sentence
person2: here is my sentence. Here's another one
person3: here is my sentence. here's another one
person4: here is my sentence
person4: here's another one

A SUBTLE DISTINCTION but for some reason the way person3 does it looks so much worse to me. I guess it's because the break between posts (like with person4's) is enough somehow. It kind of... substitutes for normal sentence boundaries.

Oh, I see what you're saying there.

[doxinator.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't really agree with that since I think meaningful things can, have, and will be said without perfect grammar, and those things are still very valuable and worth taking the time to read and, possibly, learn from, but I don't think there's really anything else I can add to that without running around in circles, so :B. LET'S JUST AGREE TO DISAGREE

YOU KNOW I'VE SORT OF NOTICED THAT, though I always thought it was less aesthetically pleasing when the capitalization on the two sentences are different. Like:

this is a sentence. This is a sentence.
This is a sentence. this is a sentence.

It just looks better to me to have them both be the same, I don't know. It doesn't get on my nerves or anything, though :B

[melaniedavidson.livejournal.com]

I'm not saying they're not, necessarily, just that for me it's not worth it to slog through to find out, since I can easily just talk to someone else--and there's at least an equal chance of that other person having something meaningful to say.

Oh yeah, the second one's just terrible and ugly. D: The first one... I don't know; it kind of looks like it's cutting in from something else, if that makes sense. It does look worse without the timestamp and handle in front of it, though.