i am here to discuss the argument of literacy.
just so you guys know, this is mainly focused on the roleplaying section on gaia online, not livejournal or solia online or any other website.
by dictionary references, literacy and illiteracy are the ability and the inability to perform reading and writing.
see:
il�lit�er�a�cy | 1. | a lack of ability to read and write. |
| 2. | the state of being illiterate; lack of any or enough education. |
| 3. | a mistake in writing or speaking, felt to be characteristic of an illiterate or semiliterate person: a letter that was full of illiteracies. |
lit�er�a�cy| 1. | the quality or state of being literate, esp. The ability to read and write. |
| 2. | possession of education: to question someoneapos;s literacy. |
| 3. | a personapos;s knowledge of a particular subject or field: to acquire computer literacy. |
what about semi-literates? advanced literates? are they capable of ADVANCEDwriting or are they only able to write SEMIsentences?
itapos;s peculiar how roleplaying and the roleplaying community has turned into a bit of a cliqueish sort. For example; there are the elitists who wish to only roleplay with people capable of writing extremely long posts that span to up to 3,000 words.
another is semi-literates, who write in a rather uneducated manner, such as failure to use proper punctuation and capitalization, decreasing coherency and lacking in the skill to string sense-making sentences together.
(by the way, my useage of all lowercase is simply my preference in casual chatting; i do not type completely lowercase during my roleplay adventures nor do i do it in some of my fictional pieces.)
the oddity i have found is peopleapos;s biasm towards semi-literates and advanced literates. Yes, they too receive distaste from the "literates". The just "literates", the ones who do not have advanced or semi tagged onto their title.
i call myself a literate simply because i can produce just as much as any advanced, but i choose not to. Some call this laziness, but i just donapos;t like typing out 13 paragraphs to get my point across. I donapos;t associate with typical semi-literate roleplays (slave roleplays, family roleplays, yaoi high school roleplays, etc.) but i do not choose to mingle with advanced literates either. I find that there are equally kind people in both, but there is a prominent snobbiness that advanced literates carry. Which is why the term "elitist" was coined for them.
thereapos;s negative stigma attatched to both parties, however, there is more negativity expressed towards semi-literates. Actually, a relative of mine-- "S"-- is a semi-literate... Or rather, claims to be.
she may not produce more than a paragraph or so at a time, and her spelling isnapos;t spot-on accurate every moment of the day, but i find her playing enjoyable and i donapos;t discriminate against her.
my other relative-- "E"-- is literate, can produce up to 3 paragraphs and her spelling is impeccable, even on her bad days. I find her just as enjoyable to play with as my other relative.
S is more likely to gain negativity in the roleplaying community (like gaia online, for example) because of her inexperience and her tendency to only give single-paragraphs at a time. She genuinely enjoys this, and because of the general people she would be listed to play best with, i donapos;t think sheapos;d have much fun on the sites i go to. So itapos;s mainly just me and E for her.
i have concluded recently that most semi-literates are actually very capable at writing, and most advanced literates just prefer to have a LOT to work with.
but just because you can work with a lot and produce a lot doesnapos;t make your roleplaying quality.
there are also the "poetry roleplayers", who are, conventionally, just as annoying as everybody else. They tend to act even more hoity-toity than elitists. They are the elitists of elitists, if thatapos;s possible. Often times, they write in posts decorated ridiculously and their posts donapos;t make sense half of the time. And sometimes they refuse to let anybody join amongst their silly playing unless theyapos;ve played with them before. Jackasses...
but i digress.
i often find roleplays i think of enjoying until i read the rules, where they request "advanced literates" and their requirement is 5 - 6 lines in 4 - 7 paragraphs.
no.
i refuse to write an incredibly long introduction post for a bunch of snobs. And iapos;m not calling all advanced literates snobs, itapos;s just that a majority are.
and sometimes, the same situation occurs, except they ask for 4 - 6 sentences per posts. So itapos;s a pick-your-poison situation, in a way:�do i want to feel inferior, or do i want to feel above these people?
i want equals to play with. Itapos;s a shame that on gaia, itapos;s so easily seperated into 3 categories. And itapos;s so hard to find a good literate-- JUST LITERATE-- roleplay where thereapos;s a spot open. Theyapos;re taken up so quickly.
and as a final note:
itapos;s either . Or ...
there is no .., and have you ever heard of commas? ever? and do you know that the apostrophe exists in the symbollic alphabet (as i call it)?
and you canapos;t forget YOUapos;RE and YOUR and THERE and THEIR. I wonder how often i will continue seeing this.
english is the national language for america. I am sick of native americans that were raised knowing english speaking "liek dis". Fuck you, holy fgsfds.
for those people that say TL;DR:
I AM SO SICK OF THE PEOPLE ON GAIA, HOLY FUCKING HELL SOMEONE SAVE ME.
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