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Gen Z Netiquettes

manyonepercents.substack.com

161–170 of 269 posts

Re: Gen Z Netiquettes

#161
post #59

> 9. Capitalizing the first letter in a sentence will reveal where you are This one really surprises me, if someone contacted me without bothering to type a proper sentence I would just think they're an idiot. Everyone I know always starts a sentence with a capital letter, no matter the platform. They all know how to use the shift key. This isn't even gate keeping, people use slang all the time, it is basic English.…

This seems like a very effective way to dismiss people that don't share your background. Also, not speaking basic English does not make one an idiot, there are actually quite a few other languages in the world.

> This seems like a very effective way to dismiss people that don't share your background.

Yes, my social-economic status is defined specifically by how I use capital letters.

Re: Gen Z Netiquettes

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emojis are a more granular and expressive form of the more traditional lol, rofl, haha, :), :(. They’re a useful side channel for expressing tone.

They're really not though, because they render differently on different devices. If I send a gun emoji, it may render as a squirt gun for you for instance. Very different meanings.

Also the way I feel about certain emojis is different from how you feel about them and thus carry different (if slightly) meaning.

For example, I pretty much never use the clown emoji as I find it personally offensive. But I'm sure that pretty much everyone else doesn't feel the same about it.

Re: Gen Z Netiquettes

#164
post #13

> 9. Capitalizing the first letter in a sentence will reveal where you are This one really surprises me, if someone contacted me without bothering to type a proper sentence I would just think they're an idiot. Everyone I know always starts a sentence with a capital letter, no matter the platform. They all know how to use the shift key. This isn't even gate keeping, people use slang all the time, it is basic English.…

You should probably spend more time on the internet, or be a bit more relaxed. Many people uncapitalize for stylistic effects, say to portray how you're uninterested or chill you are, which are very common young people signals for "I'm cool". Other than that plenty of non idiots forget to capitalize a sentence.

I spend too much time on the internet. I would strongly argue that using the same style/level of English (punctuation, capitalization, grammar) that a seven year old knows is far more communicative and understandable than using incorrect punctuation and worrying if a full stop means someone is angry.

Perhaps people should just read the content of the message and stop worrying about the set-dressing. "They capitalized, they must be a nerd", "she ended that will a full stop, she must be mad!".

Re: Gen Z Netiquettes

#165

> 9. Capitalizing the first letter in a sentence will reveal where you are This one really surprises me, if someone contacted me without bothering to type a proper sentence I would just think they're an idiot. Everyone I know always starts a sentence with a capital letter, no matter the platform. They all know how to use the shift key. This isn't even gate keeping, people use slang all the time, it is basic English.…

capitalization conveys essentially no information in itself, so it would be a waste to continue mindlessly using it when it could be encoded with additional information. Part of what we are seeing with evolving norms is the fat being cut from written english. is our completely redundant capital chatacter set REALLY being used to its fullest extent right now? An "idiot" does things without knowing or considering why.…

Your message was literally harder to parse without capitalization.

Re: Gen Z Netiquettes

#166

> 9. Capitalizing the first letter in a sentence will reveal where you are This one really surprises me, if someone contacted me without bothering to type a proper sentence I would just think they're an idiot. Everyone I know always starts a sentence with a capital letter, no matter the platform. They all know how to use the shift key. This isn't even gate keeping, people use slang all the time, it is basic English.…

What about chatting or just shooting off one off messages? Isn't shift an overkill then?

Yeah, I think I should say that when a longer conversation is _ongoing_ then I think dropping capital letters and full stops is more natural as the conversation flows.

If I am trying to communicate something or it's the first message then it's always capitalized with the usual punctuation. Maybe even a semi-colon if I am feeling listy.

Re: Gen Z Netiquettes

#168

Every time some new generation starts to create its own identity, some proportion of the previous dominant generation reacts defensively by attacking it with wilful ignorance and disdain. It's a tragic way to age. Worse than a ponytail and a motorbike. If you find yourself finding smug, try looking at an old Reddit rage comic/4chan greentext/usenet flamewar, depending on your age.

unfortunately every time a new generation starts to create its own identity they age to either throw away the baby with the bathwater or to repeat the same.mistakes of the previous generations. My generation did it too. Social progress is not linear growth but sinusoidal.

A point well worth making - every generation assumes it’s more progressive than the last, but that’s not always the case.

Re: Gen Z Netiquettes

#169
Irrelevant to the article, but it is a part of it, which made me think:

"Disclaimer: theoretically speaking I’m a genZ. But I could never identify myself as one because I never quite know about most of the rules until recently. This is a gen Z edition, because gen Z practices these rules a lot, not because I’m one."

I don't think the generation you're born in is something you identify with. Nor do I think that people "practice" the generational rules, as these "rules" are the result of their behaviour not something that one would practice/actively strive to do. As such, no matter what you do, that actions and behaviour is of the generation that you're born into.

Example: You don't choose your parents, nor do you choose your siblings.

If most of your siblings engage in daily running but you don't, saying that you don't identify as a child of you parents because children of your parents engage in daily running, is a bit of a backwards to the objective truth. (I can't think of a better way to put it into words, but I hope that fellow thinkers can see the logic that I'm trying to explain.)

Maybe something like this: It is illogical to define yourself by the actions of others.

Or:

The actions of others, front define who you are.

tl;dr: You are GenZ not because of what you do. But because what you do, is done by GenZ.

Edit: You are not a man because you do manly things. Things are manly because a man does them.

Re: Gen Z Netiquettes

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers. > - Socrates, 400 B.C.…

I am somewhat worried that this kind of rebuttal may "flush away" even actual pathological developments. Current youth seems to suffer from many more mental disorders (such as depression) than before. Share of people who had sex by their early twenties dropped significantly, which may be a consequence of having less intimacy and more solitude. Non-academically-talented young men seem to be less successful than ever b…

> Share of people who had sex by their early twenties dropped significantly, which may be a consequence of having less intimacy and more solitude

This meme feels wildly ironic to me, given I grew up in an environment of Old People Upset That Teenagers These Days Are Having Too Much Sex.

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