Comments on: Give My Irregards To Mefi

By: Josh Millard

Josh Millard — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:14:12 +0000

Just charting, not condemning. If anything, I’m in the It’s A Word camp, with the standard disclaimer that being aware of the reception specific usages are likely to get is a good survival skill for any careful writer or speaker.

I wouldn’t use it myself, since I think regardless and irrespective are both fine words that do their jobs well in a way that irregardless doesn’t really add anything to, but, eh.

By: The Ridger

The Ridger — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 18:11:01 +0000

So, really: is he condemning the word or just charting the number of people who can’t help but scream about how much they hate it?

By: Gen Kanai

Gen Kanai — Wed, 20 May 2009 01:30:13 +0000

How about misuses of ‘inflammable’?

By: bitter-girl.com

bitter-girl.com — Tue, 19 May 2009 13:57:59 +0000

Do this for “impactful” and I will love you even more…god, I HATE that non-word.

By: zoinks

zoinks — Tue, 19 May 2009 06:14:37 +0000

I suppose you’ll find the highest deleted/not deleted response ratio in AskMe, since only a response containing additional, hopefully more helpful information than just “gaaahhhh!! irregardless!!!” will (okay, should) remain there, while “irregardless”-response-specific(?) comments will be more likely to avoid deletion in other areas. This is probably also part of the reason for the apparent low response rate in AskMe. And as you mention the older AskMe threads being less aggressively moderated and sometimes more chatty, the deleted/not deleted response ratio should increase over time…? I’d be happy to be proven wrong though, and learn that it’s just a result of commenters in AskMe exercising self-discipline and laying off the snark.
– you already know all that
– troutfishing
– oh, alcohol (to the tune of oh, canada, natch)

By: Josh Millard

Josh Millard — Tue, 19 May 2009 04:50:45 +0000

Omelet, eggs, breaking, etc.

An analysis of specifically those comments that have been deleted is on my radar, but it wasn’t really in the scope of this, which took a silly number of hours to accomplish even as is.

By: quonsar

quonsar — Tue, 19 May 2009 01:41:35 +0000

Irregardless of your assertions of all-inclusivity, the fact remains that Metafilter as a historical archive is shot full of gaping holes, many hundreds of comments having been consigned to the bit bucket over the course of time. This is an analysis of merely the irregardus which remain.

By: iamkimiam

iamkimiam — Mon, 18 May 2009 22:38:55 +0000

Fascinating post! My personal take is that ‘irregardless’ is a timely example of the subtle ways we do stuff with words. And by do stuff, I mean the identity construction, social indexing, metacommentary, etc. that goes on in everyday public speech, somewhat under the radar. I don’t think this is terribly unlike cycles of ‘r’ dropping in east coast dialects. Granted, it doesn’t quite work the same way, but what it can demonstrate about class, power, and social attitudes is quite revealing. And that people feel it important/interesting enough to go on record about it – in the form of reaction – (I would argue) shows that this public reification is meaningful to them on some level. ‘irregardless’ might just be one of those highly metonymic things that people can access easily and do their unconscious ‘social work’ with, ie. in the form of a Response or Reactive Prompt. It could be like a little meme or microcosm of sorts that serves to built solidarity between intellectuals in this totally benign, socially acceptable way. Who knows! But talk about a plate of beans!

Anyways, very cool stuff and I hope to see you tonight to talk about it some more!

By: spicynuts

spicynuts — Mon, 18 May 2009 21:03:11 +0000

You should do this for certain phrases that signal a post will elicit a majority of cliched, useless comments. For example, any music post these days is pretty much unreadable because it devolves into a discussion of your band sucks vs. you suck for judging my tastes vs. no my band doesn’t suck you suck. You could use the phrase ‘your favorite band sucks’ as an indicator of this event taking over a thread, and do some analysis on what percentage of comments after the ‘x band sucks’ remain useful or relevant to the original post.

I envision the following phrases could be used for this experiment: “LOLXTIANS”, “your favorite band sucks”, “pepsi blue”, “GYOB”, “wendell”.

I note this because of your statement: “That’s a tremendous amount of reactivity — if such were the case for more than a slim collection of outlier words and phrases, conversation on any topic would be pretty much impossible.” To me, we have reached this point with certain topics. It would interesting to get data like the above about those topics.

By: Josh Millard

Josh Millard — Mon, 18 May 2009 19:46:13 +0000

Render unto nattering prescriptivists what is nattering prescriptivists’, as the old saying goes.