OT - douchey MgoBlog users

If I was a better speller in grade school I would not have mistakenly signed up for the sewing bee. I tell ya, those Amish kids punked my ass Ol' skool.

Also, please post in English next time, poncho. Normally, I'd feel bad about sounding like such a xenophobe, but I think in this case, it's just fighting fire with fire.

Also, is the username a reference to the Deftones album or to uh, nose candy?

That Deftones album kicks. When I was a student at Mich, we played that CD in my friend's room one time and we suddenly went from an "I'm in a band" dorks' pedantic modern-rock-ripping session to a Wrestlemania-Bedspring-popping-TV-going-through-the-window melee.

So that's two things we have in common, WP. We like Michigan football, and you apparently like the Deftones.

Then again, I don't really fit in well with most people at a Deftones concert. I came to them via Far. I got to Thursday the same way. I don't really fit in well with most people at a Thursday concert either. I miss Far, even if all that's left is a huggy, well-meaning skinny kid who plays beside an R2D2 unit.

You know why? Because I'm an intellectual snob. My non-sports-related websites include Woot and xkcd.

I don't really ever give people direct crap about spelling/grammar unless it's someone I know would normally not make that mistake (e.g. Brian). On the other hand, Brian's knowledge of English far outclasses mine, so if I ever did start pick-nicking nicks, I'd be inviting the same on myself.

Still, I very much appreciate good grammar, for the same reason that I appreciate strong speaking skills in conversation. Communication is about getting ideas across. We agree on certain rules to make it easier to communicate.

One thing that does tend to bug me, though, is when people refer to a dialectic as a "rant." A rant implies anger, and a lack of reason. If you admit you're ranting, then you've basically said "what I'm writing should in no way be construed as a valid opinion."

But we're straying from the topic. And the topic is White Pony, and Deftones concerts, and Thursday concerts, and how most of the people there are mostly interested in finding a pit in which to mosh.

I've moshed. In a bedroom on Williams even.

But I'll never get to be one just one of the dudes. I liked going to school. I was good at it. Almost a decade removed from freshman year, I'm even better at it now.

This is my corner of the Internet. There's a whole Thursday concert out there for you to mosh in, where, as you pointed out, there is nobody to correct you for grammar, or improper use of a comma, or the inherent inability of a person typing an anger-fueled diatribe to break up that stream-of-consciousness with a new paragraph. A new paragraph is a pause, a moment to collect the information of the previous stanza, and then begin on the next coherent thought. That's of little use to a boiling rage, to what would properly be referred to as a "rant."

So, like I said, I'm not one to mutter about bad English. But I like the people who do. A lot. They're my kind of nerds. They're the same kind of people who would stay up 'till 5 a.m. in a crappy house on East William, muttering about how teenieboyz who paint their fingernails black and play a bar-chord 1,4,5 progression to an aggravatingly simplistic 4/4, call themselves "Benj," and try to convince people they're "punk" should be removed from the universe.

So rather than pass stereotypes about my kind of people, why not just let us have this corner of the great big World Wide Web. Let us have our university, which, as you point out, isn't the best in the country, but is still mighty up there.

We've got our biases against EMU. All druggies. Dirty Meijer. So unfair they got Sidetrack. But I've never really met a U-M student with the kind of anger toward the stereotype that you seem to have. I always thought we were so close to each other the communities just overlapped, meshed, and were both the better for it.

So maybe I'm wrong about having our own corner of the Internet. Maybe we do need the Eastern rats to keep the Michigan brats grounded. But there's a better way to do it than direct insult. Have a little respect for the institution up Washtenaw, and the high standards that have kept it such a great place. We're a little different, sure, but fuck, man, when we're ripe, we all bleed out of control.

Nice post. really, what i have to say isn't to you but because of the points you brought up. This is a great university, not the best in the nation, but exceptional compared to others in michigan. Just because you all go to a better college than all the other students who stay in state doesn't mean you are better as individuals. I haven't just met 20 people who i'm basing my opinion on, i deal with thousands of students a week for 20 seconds at a time and yet sadly that is long enough to form my opinion.

Many of you will not succeed in life, while many people who don't graduate from college will become successful. If this turns out to be one of you who read this, will you still consider yourselves better than others? Lets see if those of you who don't succeed act arrogant later in life. Maybe you will all realize that there is no place in life to act better than somebody else because there will always be somebody better than you. There is no reason to knock on anybodies grammar or spelling because there will always be somebody who has a better grasp of the english language than you. Plus, I've never read a post that I wasn't able to understand because of the grammar, the people who ragged on the post were just looking for a reason to show off their so called superiority.

Even though I suppose, due to my comments on the "Rodriguez Announces Departure (Grady?)" thread, I am one of the people Mr Pony is referring to, I have really enjoyed this thread.

The great thing is that a thread whose goal was to point out how bad this community is actually served to exemplify its best qualities. With very few exceptions, no one stooped to the OP's level. He was basically trashed through the use of wit and logic, though he seemingly does not have the ability to realize this. As usual, posters like WolvinLA, CPS, Chrisgocomment made me laugh out loud. Magnus was succinctly insightful as usual. WolverSwede, someone I have not seen around here, with great perspicacity captured what this board is all about - much better than I could have.

My two cent contribution is that there is an positive relationship between extent of one's inferiority complex and perceived arrogance in one's environment. And the causal arrow goes one way - inferiority leads to perceived arrogance; perceived arrogance does not lead to feelings of inferiority.

I actually tend to agree with the OP. I was always a bit annoyed by the constant grammar policing here, but never really cared enough to comment about it. Using proper grammar has always been something I tried to do, but I do think it's a bit ridiculous for someone to get criticized for poor punctuation when trying to discuss something a trivial as Denard's 40 time. For the record, I was accepted into Michigan, but for a variety of reasons that I'm sure no one here cares about, I opted to attend a state school in Illinois instead.

Anyways, I made my way to Ann Arbor a few times in a past 4 or 5 years and was completely taken aback by how condescending most students were when finding out I was a student at another school (that, heaven forbid, had a 1-AA football team) but still made my way out to Ann Arbor for a football game each year. I realize the small sample size I encountered does not represent the entire student population, but I just wanted to let the OP know he wasn't the only one with this experience.

Someone earlier stated that there are conceited students everywhere, to which I completely agree. However, in my admittedly limited experience, every other Big 10 school I've visited (Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Northwestern, and Purdue), pales in comparison in terms of the level of conceit and entitlement, with the possible exception of Northwestern. Whether that is anyone else's opinion, I am not sure, but I just wanted to put in my two cents and let you all know that this is the image, warranted or not, that many project onto you as students or alumni.

P.S. While I got accepted into Michigan, Illinois flat out rejected me. It's just one instance, but for those of you thinking Michigan and Penn are equals, you might want to think again.