I recently had an experience on Facebook that made me dizzy.
A feeling of vertigo at the depth of the idiocracy that is looming over our society, or what will be left of it in 10, 20 or 30 years. It made me want to write these few lines, which are far from covering the subject (once again, I'm just an ordinary guy who is thinking in his own corner, nothing more).
Here we go: I have been following a Facebook page called Pigeon Gratuit for several months, maybe even years, which has made it its mission to denounce the abuses of certain entrepreneurs or individuals who want to recruit people or obtain services by offering internships or volunteer or precarious jobs, or who ask for services such as “all the photos of a wedding for 50 euros”, or even free musical services for their overly cool start-ups, or the development of a website by communication students, etc., in exchange for... visibility, or promises of hypothetical fixed-term contracts that will never materialize. In short, profiteers, scammers, and thoughtless people who don't even take two minutes to put themselves in the shoes of those they are addressing.
The page is maintained by three or four people who take turns to publish. They hit the mark 9 times out of 10 and, in my opinion, this work is beneficial, intelligent and indicative of the harshness of the times. In February 2024, one of them published a very well-made comic book showing how, under the guise of competitions, people are encouraged to work for free and then their work is used in exchange of a “chocolate medal”. It is well-written and enjoyable to read, but with regular spelling mistakes. Since this comic strip is designed to inform, and therefore to be shared and reproduced many times, I post a comment in which I begin by congratulating the author, emphasizing that I agree with him 100%, but noting that it is a shame that all these spelling mistakes detract from the message. I even offer to give him a hand with the proofreading, completely voluntarily.
Immediately, self-proclaimed defenders of the author arise, arguing that I am “nitpicking for nitpicking”, that my comment is off-topic, contemptuous, infantilizing and that I am displaying a will to dominate that is as unbearable as it is illegitimate. Others are ironic because I wrote “ftes” instead of “fautes”, which would disqualify my intervention. I reply that I am not a “grammar Nazi” as they say on the networks, that “ftes” is the usual abbreviation for “fautes” (mistakes), that I myself make spelling mistakes and that I am very happy when they are pointed out to me. I then receive a barrage of hostile comments, from which it emerges that my intervention is “very sad” because I do not realize the “effort voluntarily made by the author”.
Well, exactly! That's even what prompted me to write this message.
Ajax washes whiter than white
Then a white knight tries to calm things down by writing to me: “Let's agree to disagree and leave it at that.” I find that both easy and stupid. It's like saying that everything is part of everything, that everything is equal and therefore that nothing is important in the end. I didn't start the fight, I had no intention of causing harm, quite the contrary. But now the guy pissed me off. So I replied that if we're talking about the author's effort, well, all the more reason! Why spoil that effort with a few spelling mistakes? Next, “You understood what he meant”. Yes. I also understand a child who is starting to talk, but that's no reason not to help him or her expand their vocabulary.
The knight answered:
— cf previous message. (Let's agree blahblabla...)
— (Me) Yes, so it's not a discussion: you lash out and kick the ball away as soon as someone answers you. Last example: you have a custom paint job done on your car, you like it but there are a few cracks in the varnish. You don't point them out, because it would be “sad, considering the effort the painter put in”?
Following this, the guy steps it up a gear:
— (White Knight) OK, you want to talk? Let's go.
1. When did the author ask you for advice about his production? Unsolicited advice, does that ring a bell?
So you should only give advice to those who ask for it. QED
2. The author literally tells you that he takes time out of his free time to produce these comic strips. How dare you say, “It wouldn't take much effort to get someone to correct it.” But what do you know about it?
I know because I'm ready to do it with him, it'll take a quarter of an hour. I won't even mention that I used to be a teacher because I might get lynched 😉
3. You are infantilizing the author “when a child blablabla”. He is not your child, you are not his father, so stay in your place.
Nonsense. I am so amazed by what I have just read that I don't know how to reply, as it smells so much of low-brow barroom psychology.
4. You are not the customer here, you didn't have to pay anything to read the comic strip, so your comparison with the custom painting makes no sense.
It's free, so let's not improve anything. Mmm...
5. Remarks about spelling mistakes are a profound expression of disdain and domination. Shall I continue, or can you reconsider and admit that your remark was inappropriate?
But you're completely nuts or ? No contempt, no domination. I was rather in a constructive approach. I think YOUR intervention was inappropriate.
And I'll spare you a whole load of it. If you want to read it all (in french), the link is HERE.
Did you say standard?
So of course in French spelling there are inconsistencies, silent letters that are sometimes only there thanks to the scribes of past centuries who, paid by the line, added letters or gave them convoluted forms to earn more, but there is also a whole section that is logical, instructive and fascinating. Logical because it derives from etymology, conjugation and grammar. It is instructive, providing us with information about the meaning, origin or family of a word. It is fascinating, because it often leads us to reconsider things that we thought we had acquired, to adopt new points of view. In short, spelling is one of the keys (along with others such as conjugation, grammar, etymology, syntax and context) of understanding the mechanics of our own language (or a foreign language later on) and therefore of developing and refining our thinking, our communication, our grasp of nuances, the pleasure we take in reading, etc.
I also know that in many people's eyes, including the author of the comic strip, according to what I saw in another post, spelling is only normative, a tool for the domination of the “upper” classes over the workers, the poor, the dominated, in other words. I would say that yes, there are many sectors where the desire for domination of the so-called upper classes can be found (money, houses, cars, clothes, food, expensive leisure activities, vacations, and unfortunately also women), and language is one of them.
But be assured that these “superior” classes will always find a way to distinguish themselves from the plebs, to ostracize you. But that's no reason to abandon the tools that would allow us to fight them, including spelling. You can belong to a less well-off social class and still be good at spelling. That doesn't make you an oppressor.
A standard, beyond a simple constraint, can also be a point of agreement, a tool for understanding and communication between members of the same society, the same country, or even the same world. For example, we all call the color red: “red”. It is a convention. We do not know if we all see the same thing, the same shade. Better yet, we are almost certain of the opposite. But naming this (these?) color(s) in the same way allows us to agree, to communicate, to make sure that we are talking about the same thing, while perceiving it differently. Similarly, spelling allows us to communicate with a certain degree of precision in writing, thanks to conventions that we have in common. Spelling is also a way of sharing, and too many people forget that.
OKbutyodidunderstand, right? So ?
Or: “Spelling doesn't matter as long as people understand.” This is partly true, but irrelevant in the medium and long term. It opens the door to an uninhibited deterioration of spelling and language which, little by little, will inevitably lead us to a point where we will no longer understand each other. And by then, it will be too late: we will have hit the wall. Take a stroll on le bon coin (online used product ads site) and you will already see a number of difficult-to-understand ads.
Neglecting spelling, the mechanics of language and its comprehension is the shortest path to idiocracy. Spelling, whether grammatical or customary, is one of the guarantees (among others) of the development of our minds, our freedom of thought and the cohesion of a society. All this has already been said, better than by me, notably recently by a guy whose political career I do not particularly like (from Chevènement to Marine via Dupont-Aignan), but who is right when he says that by impoverishing the vocabulary, simplifying the spelling and amputating the conjugation of certain modes and tenses, we de facto impoverish our capacity for reflection, cut off our access to nuances and deprive our minds of construction tools, which are indispensable for the elaboration of a global, measured and intelligent way of thinking.
It should also be emphasized that the lack of vocabulary, of gradation, of mastery (however imperfect) of language leads to mutual misunderstandings, which can escalate into verbal or even physical violence. When someone is hit for a so-called “lack of respect”, stabbed for refusing a cigarette, when a young woman is immolated in a garbage dump because she prefers to end a romantic relationship, when cinemas are burned down, when girls who have come topless to disrupt a demonstration are beaten up, when a grandmother and her granddaughter are attacked in the street for no reason, or when teachers are killed because people listen to stupid sermons without being able to judge for themselves by going to the source, what is going on? We deliberately choose to turn our backs on intelligence, to abdicate our free will, our freedom of choice, and we put ourselves in the hands of other people who will manipulate us. And I'm not necessarily talking about cynical manipulation: the manipulators may well be convinced of the merits of their actions, but that changes nothing for the manipulated. They are submissive, led like cattle wherever one wants them to go.
IDGAF
As far as I'm concerned, you can write any way you like, or not write at all, I couldn't care less! But I won't read you, I won't share your posts, even if I agree with you. I will never agree to use horrors such as inclusive writing, I will not use the annoying simplifications of spelling. Why? Because I refuse to propagate ignorance, to promote stupidity and I do not want to live in a world of constant first degree thinking, of immediate satisfaction and of the “Everything is equal so nothing is important” attitude.
And then, if we think about it for a second: who simplifies spelling? Who has an interest in cultivating immediacy at the expense of the long term? Who prefers to rely on the oral, volatile and if possible poor in vocabulary, against the written, the trace, the precision? Who seeks to favor knee-jerk reaction over reflection? Who, if not these same “superior” and ruling classes? Spelling, and knowledge more generally, is a tool for emancipation, for the construction and elevation of thought. To turn our backs on it is to hand over to the dominant forces the tools that enable us to fight them, the levers to lift our heads out of the water while they try to keep them underwater.
What is the point of a Hanouna, if not to distract us, in the original sense of the word? While you are watching him, you are diverted from what really matters, from seriously worrying subjects, from the fact that he works for a channel run by a fundamentalist Catholic with a very authoritarian streak, for example. The same one that finances Zemmour and Ms. Niece. Your thoughts (if this part of your brain is even engaged by these types of TV shows) turn elsewhere, to the futile, the instantaneous, the knee-jerk reaction. In short, what is the point if not to shove it down your throat in the most vulgar way possible?
WTF? LOL! TKT...
This race towards the tawdry, the insipid, the intellectually vacuous, can be found in all areas. Why accept this? Why give up everything that would allow you (us) to get out of the race towards mediocrity in which we are being locked? Giving up on education, learning, thinking, reading and learning is to accept that in the long term (5, 10, 20, 50 years) we will become a society of zombies glued to their screens to mock the latest video of so-and-so with memes, or to wage epic battles on X (Twitter being, apparently, still too complicated as a name): “Shocked or not by Aya, Jennifer, Zendaya or Miley's see-through outfit, at the forty-second edition of the What The Fuck Awards?” All while ordering junk food on burgerz2you.com and watching the progress of the slave, taped to his electric scooter and a prisoner of his status as a self-employed entrepreneur, who brings it to us.
Tempted? Don't get impatient, it's coming soon, it won't be long, as they say in Quebec.
Wesh Bro...
