TL;DR Makes Me Want to Punch Someone in the Face.

[Doclector]

In the past I'd see people post the 'Too Long; Didn't Read' abbreviation to posts that were quite understandably long and hard to read. Like those people who don't section things off into paragraphs or made the entire post one long, long, long run-on sentence. That's not what I'm talking about.

It's the intense miss-use of it I've seen over the more recent years that pisses me off. A post, say, this large was skipped over entirely with the TL;DR montage. This is only, what, six sentences so far? That's not too long! What the fuck?

Is it the current generation or the way people are headed that makes TL;DR more heavily used? Are people just lazy? They can't read anymore? If so, why are they on a forum and replying to a thread they didn't read? It blows my mind and trying to understand it only confuses me. Thus why this thread was created. Why do you think people are in this 'I don't want to read a post' mentality more heavily now?

What really got me was this one RP I was in (on a different forum that I'm not going to link to). I'd write this decent post (let's say three or four paragraphs), nicely detailed, and the person GMing would either ignore my post completely or only reply off the first, say, paragraph of it. Then everyone involved would get confused. When inquired, the GM would say, "Only do a sentence or two a post. I don't want read it all." What? But... I... Grah! And this has happened more than once with different people - to more people than myself.

The whole thing has me worried about literacy as a whole, really. Have you noticed a similar trend? And, if you don't want to ***** about TL;DR, feel free to tell me what abbreviation drives you insane.




(Those who only reply with 'TL;DR' are not original. Besides, who knows what the mods would do to you.)


Captcha: hairy eyeball

Oh dear god, I know how you feel. I tend to over-describe things, and put in admittedly unnecessary jokes, most of my stuff is TLR according to the internet. The low was two sentences being called a "life story" on facebook. Doesn't anyone read for leisure anymore? After all, you'd have thought that's half the reason people browse forums, seeming as a forum is largely text based aside from image boards.

 

[DarkRyter]

It exists for a reason.

No one likes long-windedness. If what you write is engaging enough to warrant length, you won't get TL;DR.

 

[vacerious]

I TL;DR myself sometimes because I digress too much and I feel it would be helpful to reiterate my point for clarity's sake.

Pretty much the same. Once I start typing, it can be hard for me to stop. So if I feel like I've gone on for too long, I'll include a tl;dr to help bring the point back around.

People who TL;DR others are terrible. It's super rude and reflects poorly on you. Why is someone else's argument suddenly negated due to your laziness? If you don't want to read something, then you shouldn't respond to it either

Because it's meant to insult the person in the other post, obviously. It's like going on a 20 minute rant about gay rights only to have the first person to respond with "So what you're saying is that you're coming out of the closet?" It's trolling, for lack of a better word. Don't let it get to you.

 

[Scrustle]

Spoiler

...what?

OT: I don't tend to mind it that much here on these forums. Usually people use them when they're just ranting to get something off their chest and it doesn't really matter if you read the whole thing or not. Or sometimes it's when there's a poll and the "TL;DR" is just the question, which doesn't require much context but is there anyway.

It can be annoying when people put them on the end of posts that are only a few lines anyway. How the hell is that too long for anyone to read? They're basically just writing the same thing twice for all they actually manage to get across in so few lines. It can also completely destroy context when it's needed. Like if someone writes a huge long story about some experience they have because they think it was interesting to share, then sum it up in one brief dull sentence with no context it completely sells it short. If you really want to get your story across then people should be made to fucking read it, not just scan some over-simplified boring sentence right at the end. It makes the whole rest of the post a wast of time and effort. Also sometimes, but rarely, people make the "TL;DR" section really long. Completely missing the point of why TL;DR exists.

 

[evilneko]

Wow, Teal Deering in an RP? Especially in a forum RP? (I could maybe understand in an IRC RP) That's low. I mean really fuckin low.

Did you leave that RP? I would have.

 

[Bobic]

Honestly, just because an OP is properly formatted doesn't mean it's not a long winded, unnecessary, rambling mess. Saying TL;DR doesn't always mean the person is a lazy, ADHD sufferer, most of the time it's because the OP said a load of bull that genuinely wasn't worth reading.

Yes, it's misused occasionally, but that doesn't mean the OP is never to blame.

 

[Quaidis]

Wow, Teal Deering in an RP? Especially in a forum RP? (I could maybe understand in an IRC RP) That's low. I mean really fuckin low.

Did you leave that RP? I would have.

I ended up leaving that particular rp after sorting things out, and pretty much everyone else involved also eventually dropped out. But it's also happened in more than one rp in the past. The original example wasn't a one-time thing.



Another example I forgot to bring up in Post 1 is that I do part-time at an animal help forum as well. I'm required to write huge posts to tell someone what is wrong in a situation and how to fix it. This includes, "The cat's leg may be broken and you need to see a vet" or listing a handful of possibilities. I get TL;DR people there as well. Which also makes no sense. If you're asking for help for your dieing pet, why would you ignore a post full of helpful information? It boggles the mind.

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

Joking aside, it's not really that big of a deal IMO. If someone says 'TL;DR' to a short post they clearly had nothing to contribute anyway.

This is probably being aided by the "I have an exam tomorrow and I can't sleep!" delirium, but I fell I must congratulate you on making me laugh like a demented hyena for the past 5 minutes, bravo!

Now I need to go and find what episode that's from.

 

[The Funslinger]

I honestly got to the end of the post and thought "What's that got to do with the French?"

For some reason I'd read the thread title as "TL;DR (as in, this is a long post) I want to punch the French in the face"

I wonder why that is? :S

*checks profile*

You're British. That about explains it.

 

[Meatspinner]

I'm sorry but I'm tired... ok. And I'm not a native speaker, so I suffer from the "lazy foreigner" syndrome

Besides, what happened to Teal Dear

 

[NinjaDeathSlap]

I blame Twitter. As soon as I heard Twitter had a 140 char limit, or whatever it was, I expected it to fail and lost all interest in it. I was disappointed. I don't want to sound like the old guy ranting about all this new-fangled technology the kids are into, but I think the importance of quality over quantity of communication is being lost. TL;DR is a symptom of that.

This. I'm bored by long-winded waffle as much as the next man. However, unless you're fucking Voltaire you are probably unable to say anything really profound and insightful, that impacts other people's daily lives in less than 140 characters. As such Twitter quickly became a cesspool of inanity which the entire internet is now expected to conform to.

 

[Ian Fan]

While I agree the use of TL;DR is overused, consider not leaving behind a wall of text and maybe consider that it may be an issue with your prose. (Not-withstanding your RP incident)

The original post, I would say, could have been halved in length by getting to the point quickly without providing so many lead ins and a simpler way of communicating your anecdote.

Alternatively, if replying to something and NOT trolling, use labels regarding what you're referring to. As an example,

RE: Twitter argument: 140 characters is way too little; totally agree. should be a word count not a character count.

 

[lacktheknack]

Joking aside, it's not really that big of a deal IMO. If someone says 'TL;DR' to a short post they clearly had nothing to contribute anyway.

This is my favorite gif ever now.

OT: Meh. If they're too lazy to read it, they're too lazy to put out an interesting post. It's just as well that they TLR.

The RP example is a bit baffling, though. RPs are mostly multi-author fiction, their WHOLE POINT is to be read in their entirety...

 

[lacktheknack]

This is probably being aided by the "I have an exam tomorrow and I can't sleep!" delirium, but I fell I must congratulate you on making me laugh like a demented hyena for the past 5 minutes, bravo!

Now I need to go and find what episode that's from.

Mission Impossible Mask. The myth that you can put an accurate face-mask on and fool the guy you're imitating's friends and co-workers.

That's not Jamie dancing, it's Adam in a Jamie costume. Explains a lot, doesn't it?

 

[Quaidis]

This is probably being aided by the "I have an exam tomorrow and I can't sleep!" delirium, but I fell I must congratulate you on making me laugh like a demented hyena for the past 5 minutes, bravo!

Now I need to go and find what episode that's from.

Mission Impossible Mask. The myth that you can put an accurate face-mask on and fool the guy you're imitating's friends and co-workers.

That's not Jamie dancing, it's Adam in a Jamie costume. Explains a lot, doesn't it?

That's Adam? I was fooled! And I even remember that episode! =O

 

[lacktheknack]

This is probably being aided by the "I have an exam tomorrow and I can't sleep!" delirium, but I fell I must congratulate you on making me laugh like a demented hyena for the past 5 minutes, bravo!

Now I need to go and find what episode that's from.

Mission Impossible Mask. The myth that you can put an accurate face-mask on and fool the guy you're imitating's friends and co-workers.

That's not Jamie dancing, it's Adam in a Jamie costume. Explains a lot, doesn't it?

That's Adam? I was fooled! And I even remember that episode! =O

It's more obvious in-clip.

<youtube=PcQ028DB_Ps>

dat voice

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I dunno, I think TL;DR has its use when you realize you've just written a legitimate wall of text. I read a lot, and I have a high tolerance for it on paper. Onscreen, however, is another thing entirely. Long texts not broken up by the natural divisions of physical pages bore me the fuck out and I tend to lose interest almost immediately.

In which case, TL;DR is more or less the cheap-ass equivalent of "To summarize...", which you'd use in an essay. Hence, I don't have any problems with it. Provided, of course, that the post length warrants it.

If I were to stick a TL;DR for this post, for instance, I'd prove I have so little confidence in my ability to express a point intelligibly that I'd feel forced to put in a compressed version of an already manageable post.

If you're trying to summarize three short and non-rambling sentences into one short statement, you're doing it wrong.

 

[lacktheknack]

I dunno, I think TL;DR has its use when you realize you've just written a legitimate wall of text. I read a lot, and I have a high tolerance for it on paper. Onscreen, however, is another thing entirely. Long texts not broken up by the natural divisions of physical pages bore me the fuck out and I tend to lose interest almost immediately.

In which case, TL;DR is more or less the cheap-ass equivalent of "To summarize...", which you'd use in an essay. Hence, I don't have any problems with it. Provided, of course, that the post length warrants it.

If I were to stick a TL;DR for this post, for instance, I'd prove I have so little confidence in my ability to express a point intelligibly that I'd feel forced to put in a compressed version of an already manageable post.

If you're trying to summarize three short and non-rambling sentences into one short statement, you're doing it wrong.

OP is more ticked at people who don't read the OP and just write TLR instead. It's a valid complaint.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

OP is more ticked at people who don't read the OP and just write TLR instead. It's a valid complaint.

In that case, yes, it is a valid complaint. That's basically like me going "Oh, that's your opinion on Thing X, right? Well, fuck you, 'cause I don't care. Also, trololol."

If a lead post is so long you can't bother to read it, a good rule of thumb is to scan the last two or three paragraphs. Most decent writers will concentrate their arguments there in some form or another or otherwise provide some sort of overview.