Doggerel #104: "UR TEH GAY!!!!!111!

Welcome back to "Doggerel," where I ramble on about words and phrases that are misused, abused, or just plain meaningless.

'What sort of person,' said Salzella patiently, 'sits down and writes a maniacal laugh? And all those exclamation marks, you notice? Five? A sure sign of someone who wears his underpants on his head.' -Terry Pratchett, Maskerade

For this entry, I thought I'd go ahead and pick a number of the lowest hanging fruits, and staple of the most vacuous trolls out there. It's simply amazing that some people out there seem to think that statements like "U R GAY!!!!!" will alter the course of an argument. What's more amazing is that a number of these people have graduated from grade school.

As should be obvious to those who live in a world with one objective reality, the sexual orientation of an arguer have absolutely no bearing on the validity of his arguments. Whether or not the arguer has 'gotten laid' recently has no effect on the validity of his arguments. The gender of the arguer has no effect on the validity of his or her arguments. The level of machismo exuded by an arguer has no effect on the validity of his arguments. The age of an arguer has no effect on the validity of his arguments. The geekiness of an arguer has no effect on the validity of his arguments. The laziness of an arguer has no effect on the validity of his arguments. Whether or not the arguer lives in his parents' basement has no effect on the validity of his arguments. (Though it does amuse me to think of 9/11 twoofers like that.)

Put simply, these sorts of arguments may "win" kindergarten playground arguments, political , and mainstream media debates, but they do absolutely nothing for serious arguments about truth. If you make a decision based on these lines of logic, you might as well get your tinfoil hat and start having epiphanots in your basement, preferably far away from internet and serious discussions. I prefer not to deal with mamby-pamby newage postmodern subjectivists who waffle on their opinions between sentences.