THANK YOU for this thread! I have felt like creating a thread about a few things so many times, but didn't know if I would come across as 'goading' (as I was accused of once) or being a whingeing troll.
First: people that write lengthy posts (not the issue as I like reading lengthy posts) but THEN write DH or DF (which I can never work out if the F is Friend, Father or Fiance) or any other abbreviation that takes a long time to work out. It's like, for fuck sake, you wrote a mini novel and cannot even be arsed to write out two....whole.....words? Jesus Christ! I HATE MN abbreviations. It is lazy and really makes no sense given a person has written a mini novel but decides to abbreviate 2 words. Why bother? Where is the sense in that? I see no problem with 'MIL' or 'FIL', or even just 'in-laws', but why not say Dad, and/or Mum, or son or daughter or children? Why all this DD (daughter? Dad??), DM, SC etc etc? I mean, if you are going to write out a mini novel, what hell is ONE EXTRA WORD? Not only that, I am so sick and tired of trying to decipher 'S2BXH took DF out with DC and DM wasn't happy'. What is that? Algebra? Some computer coding language? Not only that, almost every day I have to struggle to work out what an abbreviation is as I am reading, and it distracts. And quite often, many of them are not even on the list of MN acronyms. So sometimes I google, and come up with around 14 different meanings. Bloody hell. Look, just write out dad. Or mum. Or daughter 1. How fucking hard can it be? What is two extra words when you've already written 124? To me, it is like ordering a Big Mac, large french fries, extra large double hot chocolate sundae - then ordering a diet coke with it.
- Terms that are not familiar to me being a non-UKer. Many of the terms I am familiar with ie 'fancy', 'poorly', etc just grate on me because they sound so incredibly stupid. As does the word 'daft'. I just want to scream out 'will you STOP using that fucking word!!! It sounds STUPID!!' Unfortunately English terms/sayings/phrases tend to irritate the shit out of me, even more so than American terms. If I see one more person so 'so and so fancies him' I will scream. Same as 'he was quite poorly'. UGH!!! It is so and so likes/has the hots for. And he was quite unwell. Or sick. Or ANYthing, but that term. And daft, ok, where the hell does that even come from? It sounds stupid. These terms are just like nails on a chalkboard to me, only worse. Oh, another one is that everything is 'grim'. Even when a situation does not fit the actual dictionary definition. Doesn't make me feel like me feel annoyed like fancy and poorly does, but still it does sound dumb to say something is 'grim' when it isn't.
One that I don't mind but struggled with to understand for awhile on here was 'kick off at'. To me, kick off is when a football game starts. It took me awhile on here, not being familiar with the way UKers speak, to work out wtf people were saying. So it's been quite a culture shock for me on here and my first and only language is English! I still need to google phrases, sayings etc but I am getting better at the vernacular now.
As I mentioned before, people who start threads after changing names, only to run scared that people will identify them (on an ANONYMOUS BOARD, for crying out loud!) and then delete their thread. Why even bother? I just.....don't understand why you wouldn't have thought that through beforehand, and why you'd even care? The likelihood of knowing anyone on here in real life is probably 0.0002%. Deletions of OP/thread should actually not be allowed. Once it is on here, it is on here, and that's it. It should be only allowable to delete in the most extreme circumstances at the discretion of the mods. Just stop wasting people's time if you are only going to freak out and delete and run.
Lastly, people that ask for advice and you get really concerned and interested/invested in what happens, and they never come back to update. That is frustrating. I know sometimes life happens or you need more time sorting an issue out, but don't forget that people who care enough or are interested enough to give advice would like to know how it all went.