I, Viewer

I rented I, Robot this evening. It wasn't doing real well in any of the online reviews I could find, but it looked interesting and I was in the mood for something mindless and entertaining. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting, and fairly faithful to Asimov's writings. It could have been a lot better, though, and the product placement was a subtle as Mike Tyson.

Then I made the mistake of poking around in the IMDB forums just to see what other people were thinking. I'm amazed at that place. Usenet is about as faceless and consequences-free an environment you can get in terms of communicating with other people, and the flame wars there are nothing in comparison with those forums.

I'm also amazed at the quality of the postings there. It looks like the average person has the writing and spelling skills of a drunk 13-year-old with a concussion. (I don't know, maybe the average person there is a drunk 13-year-old.) I'll admit I'm a bit of a grammar Nazi, but I do realize that blogs and forums and email are not the areas where one will find the most formal and polished writings. But this?

Please dont said, that this is the worst movie, becouse youre not know what are you talking about and maybe youre realy supid, becouse its not right to said anythink like this, becouse aparently you not a kritik and defenitly not a sci-fi entiusiast, becouse if you were, and said this is the wors movie ever, you must be realy sick, becouse this is one of the best movie ever.

I read an article a few days ago about how companies are having to send new employees to remedial classes because the generation that grew up with email, cell phone text messaging, and IM clients is almost functionally illiterate. Or at least ilgrammatic, if you'll permit me to invent a word. Reading those forums, I can believe it.