Orkut — A social site

I was merely following a link that landed in my mailbox and ended up at someone’s Orkut page, someone called Preeti. She wrote a testimonial for someone thus:

ABHAY…..wat cn i spk bout diz person nw….hez a lil sensitive but very adventerous guy…hez got gr8 potential in him and alwayzz aimzz 4 d best(datz y he got me as a frnd )……hizz my super snr bt nevva made me feel so… …hiz soo gud n down 2 earth…n btw u al kn wat i call him wid many nick name lemme mention few o dem…hmmmmmB____ (he getzz on hiz nervezz weneva i cal him so )many more 2 mention…bt i hnk one iz sufficient 2 make him ngry hehehe…. nywz last bt nt least he getz ngry very soooooooon…i thnk even nw hiz ngry on me(n i thnk he knzz y)….. uff ders sooooo much to say abt him bt i’ll stop it here… finally mr.dynamic r u satisfied nw???? …


Since I was on the Orkut site, I wrote to her a simple email:

I am perhaps being optimistic but maybe — just maybe — you are not an actual idiot. Perhaps you could — if you tried — you could learn how to write.

Sincerely,
Atanu

I admit that I was feeling singularly ornery. It has been an unproductive day and I was not in a good mood. But one has to admit that it is a bit stressful to land on a page which displays idiocy so blatantly and with so much self assurance. I wrote once again:

Sorry about the last email. I forgot to put a subject line. Anyway, please do understand that if you are pretending to be stupid merely to appear cool, it ain’t so. Stupid is not cool. If you cannot write coherently, it just means precisely that — that you cannot write a single sentence without mangling it all up. It does not mean you are cool.

Grow up, for fuck’s sake. You are 20 years old, by your own admission.

Sincerely,
Atanu

The dumbing down of the population would not be so intolerable if the dumb idiots were not so proud of being so friggin’ proud of being so stupid.

Author: Atanu Dey

Economist.

4 thoughts on “Orkut — A social site”

  1. Hi Atanu. My name is Purni Siddarth. I have been reading your blog for a while now. I have enjoyed your posts on Economics and also the random ones.
    Orkut, I am member too. I cannot agree more with you about people thinking it is cool to be stupid. It irks me so much when people senselessly use “basically” and “you know”. I do not know why I let it bug me so much, but it sure does irritate me a lot.

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  3. Atanu,

    The writing was funny! I cannot imagine someone reading it. Wait! some of my old writings look exactly like the one above. Only that they were accepted for publication somewhere:)

    ==
    Here is the translation of a subhaShitha (proverb?):

    pleased by words, gods give boons,
    pleased by words, kings give lands,
    pleased by words, women give hearts,
    if you know no words, you are due for disgrace.

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