how come the ppl who use the phrase "dumbed down" as a criticism could generally themselves not actually get any dumber

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yes i am correcting the grammar and punctuation of a review which just deployed it most sneerily

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 13:17 (twenty-three years ago)

is this ben watson?

apparently he was at the sinclair gig at the barbican on friday AS WAS rob young grrr if i'd known i could have thrust my BIG IDEAS for the wire on him!

btw, ry's comments in this month's letters column are arguably even more stupid than his orig. editorial.

― Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 30 October 2002 13:24 (twenty-three years ago)

haha no it is not BW

i don't seem to have been sent the new ish of wire...

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 13:27 (twenty-three years ago)

heheh i noticed how ilxor had permeated yr 20-anniv comments! was it really the case that the "potential buyer" demanded yr editorial head on a cardew memorial plate before they wd purchase the mag? in the retrospective in general they seem to have cast you as a tragic hero!

― Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 30 October 2002 13:30 (twenty-three years ago)

I haven't bought the issue yet but i look forward to reading rob's comments.

― Julio Desouza (jdesouza), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 13:38 (twenty-three years ago)

yes, ppl keep telling me! the current publisher has over the years worked up a disrespect for his predecessor which causes him possibly to overstate the situation — she did kind of stitch me up, but then i did kind of let her

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 13:40 (twenty-three years ago)

They also cast your Wire-editorship as a proto-ILX, which is fun.

― Tom (Groke), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 13:47 (twenty-three years ago)

luke i am your fathXoR

― darth s (mark s), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 13:52 (twenty-three years ago)

I felt it was a little dangerous for them to spend time describing a magazine I would actually want to read in a magazine I only buy because there's nothing else to buy.

― alext (alext), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 13:52 (twenty-three years ago)

S H 1 T.

I've just moaned about dumbing down in the Turner Prize Thread.

― Tim Bateman, Wednesday, 30 October 2002 14:09 (twenty-three years ago)

This was deplored in a Times leader the other day (Tues 29 x '02, IIRC) - no-one employs people to correct grammar any more. My theory is that this is partly to cut costs but mainly because no-one cares or can do it any more (due to the decrease in the number of people with any qualification in Latin).

― Tim Bateman, Wednesday, 30 October 2002 14:14 (twenty-three years ago)

haha tim you mean "owing to the decrease" etc etc

(i am employed to do just this, and have been since 1995)

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 14:19 (twenty-three years ago)

Latin grammar != English grammar!

― RickyT (RickyT), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 14:22 (twenty-three years ago)

quod erat k-korrekt

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 14:23 (twenty-three years ago)

I like in a lot of reviews they put double quotation marks (i.e. ") around the term "dumbed down" (e.g. i feel that the Turner Prize has been "dumbed down"), like as if the people who read those reviews would get confused by the term "dumbed down" if those quotation marks (i.e. ") weren't there. As if people aren't patronised enough without the punctuation (e.g. , . ; : ' ")

― k chu, Wednesday, 30 October 2002 15:38 (twenty-three years ago)

actually that's another thing that bugs me, scare quotes round words or phrases that EVERYONE USES

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 15:46 (twenty-three years ago)

oh come now "mark"

― gareth (gareth), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 15:50 (twenty-three years ago)

I liked the Guardian article slating these people, a few months back.

― Ronan (Ronan), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 15:50 (twenty-three years ago)

which people? sub-editors?

― mark s (mark s), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 15:57 (twenty-three years ago)

"sub-editors"

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 15:58 (twenty-three years ago)

people who use the phrase "dumbed down" and complain about "big brother" "and" "pop" "idol" "and" "those sorts of programmes".

― Ronan (Ronan), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 16:04 (twenty-three years ago)

Aaaaaargh! I am currently spending my days typing 'letters' for the 'Principal' of a 'Further Education College' whose 'grasp' of 'grammar' is 'not so great' and his 'use' of 'such marks' is somewhat 'heavyhanded' and I don't know whether to correct stuff as I go, or if I should make alterations as he requests (like putting punctuation both sides of brackets like this.).

― Madchen (Madchen), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 16:06 (twenty-three years ago)

cross out every third word for the secret message!!

― geeta (geeta), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 16:18 (twenty-three years ago)

Writing (sic) after every error you quote is easily the best way to highlight it. Writing (sick) after every mention of vomit is nigh on compulsory.

― Pete (Pete), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 16:20 (twenty-three years ago)

Well saying "dumbed down" as an adj without a hyphen would certainly be the depth of dumb-ocity.

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 17:38 (twenty-three years ago)

Ooh, Madchen, it sounds like you work for an As Yet (lower middle class person who embellishes speech/writing to appear even more like Daily Mail type, trait first noticed in deplorable landlady I once had).

Has he graduated to 'thinking outside the box'?

― suzy (suzy), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 17:46 (twenty-three years ago)

maybe he's a proponent of the deceptively similar "out of the box thinking", i.e. it came free with your Apple Jacks

― Tracer Hand (tracerhand), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 17:58 (twenty-three years ago)

The answer may be that it is one of those phrases that demonstrate that the writer is grabbing for ready made pseudo-thoughts rather than actually thinking. A much worse example is "political correctness gone mad!", which is a guarantee that the writer is an idiot. Unless used ironically, possibly, but even that is probably past its sell-by date.

― Martin Skidmore (Martin Skidmore), Wednesday, 30 October 2002 19:41 (twenty-three years ago)

Yay! I read Wire in the shop today and two sentances into Mark's commens, I thought I was reading IL*... very strange. But I didn't buy it cause I had just enough money for a Hawkwind CD and no more cash on me.

― kate, Wednesday, 30 October 2002 21:10 (twenty-three years ago)

Blimey, they have proper bound Wire annuals here (are there any sinkah classics worth looking up?), but I cna't find this month's issue.

― Graham (graham), Thursday, 31 October 2002 16:57 (twenty-three years ago)

It is quite possible he belongs to that species, Suzy. He is also overfond of 'as a consequence', 'indeed' and 'with respect to the above'. And he writes 'E-mail'.

― Madchen (Madchen), Thursday, 31 October 2002 17:06 (twenty-three years ago)

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