every so often, i get confused

Okay, polling. We could be wrong.

Rant on FFR About Concrit Sent to a Twelve Year Old

svmadelyn: the girl. that was given the concrit.
svmadelyn: the original author.
seperis: Yes, she's twelve?
svmadelyn: yes. she's *fake*.
seperis: *intrigued*

*****

svmadelyn: *nods* I'm just saying - that is not a 12 year old.
svmadelyn: I can feel it.
svmadelyn: *eyes narrow*
seperis: Hmm.
seperis: Just a second
seperis: http://www.fanfiction.net/u/1484078/A_Disappointment_to_Everyone
svmadelyn: yes, I am looking there now.
svmadelyn: she is *not 12.*
svmadelyn: i'd bet money that "it was a psych experiment!" chick did *everything.*
seperis: I'm reading for style.
svmadelyn: hmm. it is 43 chapters though
svmadelyn: that is *serious dedication*
svmadelyn: if that is so
seperis: Well.
seperis: They are about five hundred words each.

I have been wrong before and doubtless will be again. But for the record; for a twelve year old, that's some schizophrenic sentence structure and comma use. The kind that comes when you're trying to write badly and keep forgetting and doing it correctly every once in a while. I'm also vaguely unhappy with the spelling mistakes.

Fandom Wank Entry

Hmm.

ETA: And I think this is two different people. Schizophrenic style changes as well. Yes, fine. This is weirdly fun. Also, JF is down and I'm sulking.

Comments

[dovil.livejournal.com]

The whole thing smells fishy to me. I have severe doubts that a psych class would require students to procure little more than one-off anecdotal 'evidence' to examine the differences in behaviour between off-line and on-line environments (and generally speaking as soon as you start involving people in any kind of research you have to get ethics approval, and good luck with that). The way this has been set up, nah ah don't believe it. Also there's been enough actual research done that you could just pick over what's already out there.

In conclusion: kittens are pretty.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*heee* Yes. The psychology thing is crap. And weird. And--really overly dramatically bitchy, to be honest.

[ratcreature]

Yeah, the "it was an 'experiment'" excuse is lame. I should make an icon somehow mocking the many times someone claims their internet wank / trolling was done for some "research" thing or another. Not that my confidence in higher education is that high, but I don't think even mail order diploma mills would give any credit for starting random flamewars on the internet...

[niqaeli]

Sitting back and observing the hell out of them, though, has found its way into more than one psych doctoral thesis by this point, I guarantee.

Of course, the 'it was an experiment' excuse is total crap but there actually is some truth to the idea of it--it's a way to try and say 'I wanted to see what'd happen', which usually *is* the real reason, in more acceptable turns. Well, kiddo, whacking a beehive generally means all the bees come out and sting the hell out of you. That's what almost always happens. Your 'experiment' is neither new nor enlightening and serves no real purpose. But now you *personally* know what happens when you whack a beehive!

[dovil.livejournal.com]

I should make an icon somehow mocking the many times someone claims their internet wank / trolling was done for some "research" thing or another.

This should be done. Is there an internet law? There should also be an internet law. My god, the work this kind of thing ends up generating. Heh.

[mardia.livejournal.com]

Man, that profile made my eyes BLEED. I would hope it was fake, because otherwise that girl's been cheated out of any kind of decent education...but on the other hand, there are a LOT of stories like that on FF.net. On the other hand...there's almost too much wrong with it.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*nods* And there's not *enough* wrong either. She's pulling off perfectly decent sentence structure, then abruptly messes it up three lines later. She uses commas just fine, then suddenly for a sentence or two, she doesn't. It's bizarrely inconsistent. And the spelling mistakes are surreal, plus no actual common typos anywhere.

[brownbetty]

Shoot, looks like JF is ded. Clearly this one is something special.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I blame myself because I actually posted there, foir a change. Dammit.

OTOH, more time to ponder how many of that group of friends participated in this.

[ratcreature]

So someone is just pretending to be twelve? Why? It's not really that much fun to be condescended to. There's something weirdly unnatural about adults(?) pretending to be teenagers rather than teenagers pretending to be aduts, which is the more or less natural course of things. Also, shouldn't they at least pretend to be 13? I mean, that was that cut-off age for even being able to sign up to things like LJ on your own, no?

[seperis.livejournal.com]

She was pretneding to be the 12 year old so she could--flame herself.

From what ff.net is looking like, I wonder if this has anything to do with their new and very very totally revolutionary anonymous group of fic critiquers.

[ratcreature]

Right. That has to be the most boring way to pass time ever. Haven't these people heard of online games? Or if the goal is one person performance art on the internet there's far more entertaining things to go for, like I don't know, put one of these videos onto youtube that show you swallowing cola and mentos rabidly for gross effects or something.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I'd send them to boomshine. That'll suck five days from your life without even realizing it.

...God, that game.

[shrewreader.livejournal.com]

The words that occur to me are institutional, review and board. Even undergrads are (or ought to be) taught better than to use random people in a school endorsed experiment.

Personal and Mengele-like, sure. School? Where it can be sued for its students' behavior? Not so much.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't buy it either. It's too self-congratulatory and random and reactive.

[utterfrivolity.livejournal.com]

Ok, this probably just reveals me to be a true bitch, but whatever--twelve is not that young. My grammar and spelling at twelve weren't all that different from what they are now, although my overall style has improved since then (thankfully). And even leaving aside my own writing skills, I've seen what's produced by first-graders in a program that actually discourages attention to spelling and editing, and some of these mistakes I've never seen:

Iggy was really popular; I and Fang were just his posy.

"Me and Fang" sure, but "I and Fang" just sounds like someone intentionally breaking a rule of grammar. And you know who definitely wouldn't say "I and Fang"? SOMEONE WHO USES A SEMICOLON.

But back to the bitchiness: everyone's freaking out like the kid's a six-year-old. Lots of "When I was twelve..." comments. Do people remember when they were twelve? I spent a lot of time chatting with adults online when I was twelve. I know people who had sex when they were twelve. Not recommending it, just saying. A twelve-year-old is not a child, at least not in the way some of the commenters are implying.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

That's--sixth grade elementary school with a fifty percent chance of not yet achieving menarche. No. That's pretty much child by any definition.

[utterfrivolity.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I figured most people wouldn't agree with me on that. Which is fine. I probably shouldn't have said it, and I hope it won't upset people. But I once had a job teaching 11- and 12-year-olds about contraception and transmission of HIV, and I promised myself that I wouldn't forget that 12-year-olds are making adult decisions, and that approaching them as mature adults is by far the most effective way of getting them to take a subject seriously and open up about their lives. Treating them with kid gloves doesn't get very far.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I can't comfortably put "HIV and sex talk" in the same group as "flaming critique on fiction", not to mention expecting a twelve year old to have a skillset equal to an adult in grammar and literature. They still *aren't* adults; otherwise we wouldn't bother putting them in juvenile court instead of trying all of them as adults.

I mean, I do understanding what you're saying; but I think approaching them for a lecture series on a dangerous disease is fairly different from expecting them to perform to the standard of an adult in an academic environment without sufficient training. It'd kinda be like mocking a baby boy for not having facial hair.

[utterfrivolity.livejournal.com]

I didn't mean to defend the flaming so much as roll my eyes a bit at the outrage that the phrase "twelve-year-old" provoked. I think the entire exchange is repellent regardless of the age of the participants.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*g* Agreed. I think a lot of people, including me, are still skeeved by the Megan Meier debacle. There's just something fundamentally wrong in an adult (ie > seventeen) attacking someone that young for any reason; the imbalance is too much. I do get what you're saying about behavior and agree, for the most part.

[ladyflowdi.livejournal.com]

I love how she went on to try and pass it off as a psychology experiment. That sound you just heard was Freud rolling around in his grave.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I heard his weeping as well.

[lanning.livejournal.com]

Very astute catch! I think you're right.

Oy. Where oh where does this person get the *time* to do all this? Writing as a faux 12-year-old? Flaming herself, then asserting her faux research credentials? Hell, I can't even manage to produce a story under my own name, never mind one by my inner child -- with a sockpuppet theatrical and editorial remarks from the peanut gallery, no less. Obviously the mystery poster is a master of time management and a font of creative energy. I may ask for advice. ;)

[seperis.livejournal.com]

People with sockpuppets awe me. I cannot figure out how they hold that many people in their head. I forget my own information.

*sad* I will never be a great evil overlord.