Saturday, March 30, 2013

Please! Just!! STOP!!!!

High probability you won't see this blog post until someone redirects it to you.  Why?

Those !

And the ALL CAPS.

George Takei's Facebook recently revived the trouble with trifles -- extra (or any, in my opinion) exclamation points and excessive use of all caps -- and how that can trigger Facebook and other social spam filtering.  Read more of George from his post.

The knowledge that using too many exclamation points trigger spam filtering is standard.  Many universities make it clear -- you're guaranteeing your mass emails won't be read with caps and !.  The problems associated with the juvenile nature of ! is a long subject here.

If you simply can't let go of your ! as an adult, try this analogy from Urban Dictionary.  After explaining that multiple ! are used by the overexcited and in a particular type of computer language programing, it comes all together in this passage:

This nice little analogy probably isn't too clear to anyone outside my head, but to me, the brain normally behaves like a Prolog program with an abundance of exclamation points. Stray thoughts are "cut" out of existence before they can either clog one's brain, or exit via the mouth and manifest themselves as an act of stupidity.

Marinate in that for a moment.

As an aside today, if you are not following Mr. Sulu, you are not keeping up with the social media trends and a sterling example of it's not age -- he is 75 if you've lost track, it's attitude in the digital world.  George got social from the start and remains a key trendsetter you should follow.  To recap how he got there, check out his TEDxBroadway speech.

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