Come Uppin's

Tomato, To-mah-to…Comeuppance, Come Uppin’s

One of the great joys of being an insatiable reader of internet comments is that certainty of intellectual superiority I get when I stumble on a comment that has clearly been written by an idiot adult, but could have been written more intelligently by a third grader. There I’ll be, sitting at my computer in sweat pants that haven’t been washed in a week, my gut hanging out and collecting Cheetos dust and Oreo crumbs, when I encounter a comment string filled with misspelled words and woefully inadequate commands of English, and I think, “Huh. Well, at least I’m better off than that guy.”

Come on, people—BE REASONABLE! Is it too much to ask for you to look up words you don’t know!

Years ago, I was reading a food and beverage blog post about different coffee drinks. One commenter wanted to know if anyone had a recipe for a “café ole,” not only misspelling “café au lait,” but giving it a different nationality altogether. What’s funny about comments like this is that it becomes impossible to even focus on the point of the comment (in this case, a request for a beverage recipe) because you’re too lost in all the subtler implications provided by the unwitting commenter.

How about you and I put on some comfy sweatpants, let our guts hang out, grab a bag of Cheetos or Oreos, and bask in the soft glow of intellectual superiority:

In this CNN story about Queen Elizabeth, the queen’s cousin defends Elizabeth’s unwillingness to travel to London after Diana’s 2007 death. "Susan Crofoot Davis" was none too impressed:

Yeah, Susan—the queen got hers, alright—and look at how awesome and smart and superior you appear for pointing it out! You go, girl—follow that royal pagentry!

Now put down those Oreos (trust me) and have a look at this here comment from an article on Slate about (seriously) DIY urban animal slaughter:

Wow, "Jamn." Even though I have to take issue with your ambivalent reference to the Whizbang chickenplucker (I simply cannot live without mine!), let me be the first to thank you for your meaty, er, meety commentary.

And in other fowl news…(sorry)…check out this comment from a TIME article about “As Seen On TV” products that really work. TIME declares that the Nuwave Oven is worth 130 of your hard-earned dollars; "topaz75" begs to differ:

Regurgiating. Commerical. Successfuly. Words like this piss me off so much I could punch a whole in a hole turkey.

In other news, Huffington Post reports that Obama will not extend Bush-era tax cuts. "sillygames," however, is leary of this…

Go ahead. Re-read that. Tell me if one bit of it makes sense. I know, right? Toooooootal dissapointment.

Dissapointment is relative, though. Don’t believe me? That sentence above will look as clear as a spring day in Pleasantville after you try to wrap your head around the following comment from "delta209" in an MSN article about cheap-to-own luxury cars.

Don’t look now, Sarah Palin—I mean, "delta209"—but there’s a slight possibility that, even as you’re calling other people out for being “stupid,” you may have actually exposed someone a little closer to home.

Come uppin’s: we all get ours eventually.

Be Reasonable