Oh god this is a genre of writing I absolutely cannot stand, it brings me out in a mental rash before I’ve finished reading the first sentence. The genre is the person – a guy, in my experience – who thinks he has a delightful subtle and erudite wit but doesn’t. You know what I mean, right? In love with his own writing voice, and completely blind to how tedious and unamusing and pompous it is?
It’s a nameless fool on Twitter trying to condescend to JK Rowling as if he were her beloved great uncle and knows far better than she ever will. He’s fingernails on a blackboard, I tells ya.
You see what I mean, right? It’s obvious in just that short opening.
“Once more into the fray” – oh that’s so cute, playing Henry V, only you ain’t Shakespeare. And that patronizing “I see,” as if he were the cops. You see: big deal: it’s on Twitter, so anyone can see. Nobody asked you for a report.
“With the fervor you’ve thrown into this latest proclamation” – dude that is shit writing. Rethink your whole life. You’re not good at writing; do something else. You can’t “throw” fervor, and there is no “proclamation,” and if you’re tired of reading JKR’s “latest” then go read something else. A lot of horrible for just nine words. And it’s all like that. I hate hate hate that kind of thing – the mix of pomposity and patronizing makes me go blue with rage.
KnowwhatImean?
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21 responses to “Send the bear to Alaska”
I feel you. I’m proofreading some crime fiction at the moment, and it’s become more editing than proofreading. Like, “have you considered workshopping your material with a group of other writers” kind of stuff. Like, if I hadn’t been reading to edit, I would have stopped after the first paragraph.
I found myself reading a Scott Adams book for some unknown reason; it was the same way. Lots of philosophical ‘deepities’ that he thought meant something significant, and he was like the kid in high school who just discovered things most educated people have known about for their entire adult life, and he is sure he’s the first who’s ever thought of it. Pretentious.
Women may pick the bear, but we never pick The Bear.
I was going to write a parody of the heavy pomposity would-be humour style but someone below the tweet has done that already.
“These are a multitude of words, verily, for one who lacks comprehension of their import. It doth resemble a stratagem oft employed by the masculine gender—a ploy to intrude with grandiloquence, wielding polysyllabic lexemes like a knight brandishing a sword, hoping thereby to exude an air of sagacity. Yet, alas! Such endeavors oft yield naught but futility.
But hark! Permit me to illustrate this thesis with a personal exemplum, wherein I, a humble interlocutor, dost endeavor to ascend the lofty peaks of intellectual prowess, despite harboring an intellect so diminutive that it wouldst confound even the most astute observer. Verily, my cognitive faculties resemble a flickering candle in a tempest, buffeted by the winds of inadequacy. etc.!”
I remember from half a century ago a friend (a sweet bloke but inclined to pomposity) writing an article for the school magazine about a school exchange trip. “Thirty intrepid travellers set off in the not-so-wild-blue yonder.” He asked me what I thought of this, I told him, and he was cross.
I’m soooooooo glad I’m not the only one who hates it.
It reminds me of that guy “Steersman” on the old slyme pit. The enraging thing about him was that he kept doing it forever, clearly convinced that he had a fine, sonorous, impressive style. Bleagh.
Hahahaha he deleted it. I guess he got told.
That twitter account is no longer there. Probably The Bear voluntarily closing it temporarily due to unexpected heat. Funny how they can dish it but can’t stand the attention it brings.
No, sadly, the account is still there. He deleted that one tweet.
OB: In case you have not encountered her yet, you may find solace and de-blueification courtesy of the inimitable Pam Ayres.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIxg0QE2GxQ
@Omar
Ah I do love Pam Ayres.
Ah – ‘weaponized rationalism’ – of a sort…
Thanks for that Omar!
Someone’s been at a great feast of languages.
Years ago a woman posted a viral tweet something along the lines of ‘why is it when men are losing an online argument they start to write like they’re using a quill pen on parchment to send a missive from the Revolutionary War’; the comments were hilarious (and you can imagine plenty of them were men demonstrating what she was describing).
Ah that’s a perfect description of it!
I remember the Before Trans times at the website We Hunted the Mammoth. They comment threads would get MRA trolls on there regularly, and so, so many of them wrote in precisely this style. I recall one, though I can’t remember his nom de cyber, who had this weird fascination with the word ‘zest’ and its derivative forms (particularly ‘zestfully’). He seemed completely unaware that the term had long been co-opted by a brand of soap.
@guest Verily you have placed your digital appendage on the exact locus.
OB @ #12: You are most welcome.
And a bonus: Pam hails from Northamptonshire, which is adjacent to Warwickshire, birthplace od childhood home of one William Shakespeare. Someone is welcome to correct me here, but it seems to me highly likely that Pam’s speech and intonation would be a good approximation of Old Bill’s. He certainly would not have declaimed his own lines in anything like Received Pronunciation, in the manner say, of Larry Olivier, or Derek Jacobi. (That pronunciation only came much later.)
But if those said modern thespians had spoken with the pronunciation of Pam Ayres, they would have had it thrashed out of them long since, one way or another. And I would be the first in the queue to buy a recording of Pam doing her rendition of Shakespeare’s magnificent sonnets. Authenticity and all that.
@Omar – Old Bill was a social climber and of course had an ear for language so I imagine him shedding his Warwickshire for something more Londony and pleasing to the aristocracy – though the accent was less a mark of status in his time. Sir Walter Raleigh spoke with a strong Devon accent.
He was also a player, aka actor, so probably quite practiced in changing accents.
We are all players, on a stage we call the world; each with a chosen role which suits us best. Old Bill was onto that. He could switch from part to part as it suited him.
As You Like It, Act 2, Scene 7