and things went downhill from there

On-line has been full of drama lately. If it is not the operators of FA going down another ill-advised path of self-destruction, then it is the moderator of the the /r/wow subreddit having a meltdown because of queue times.

I really don't know what to say about FA. They operate as if they have not learned a single thing over the years, and constantly work under the principle of "nothing in this plan can possibly go wrong." Ah well, it is their site to run as they wish. I have very little invested in it - emotional or otherwise.

Meanwhile on Reddit, the top moderator in the /r/wow sub reverted to an emotional 3-year-old when Blizzard had to throttle logins on their servers while they dealt with some issues. He announced that he was closing the sub to the public until he could get into the game, and he switched it to private for the next few hours. The sub has ~200K subscribers, and Blizzard uses it as one of their official communication outlets. As such, even they weighed in, asking him via Twitter if he could please reconsider his actions.

Eventually he turned the sub back on for public access, but he was caught off-guard by the animosity directed his way by many of the subscribers. Apparently, he had been expecting sympathy and support from other people whose lives had been shattered by having to wait an hour or two to log into an on-line video game. When that did not happen, he removed all of the other moderators and closed the sub again, ostensibly on a permanent basis.

In a rather rare move, the administrators on Reddit stepped in and took control of the sub from him, handing it over to one of the other moderators. Oddly, I heard more butt-hurt over that than I did over the moderator's actions. I had no problem with it, really. I am not sure what logic would dictate that the administrators of a site are required to stand back while somebody damages the user experience of a couple hundred thousand subscribers. It is true that the administrators can be very selective and self-serving in when they decide to intervene, or stand back and watch things burn, but in this case I support their actions.

In what world is "walla" a word? I have seen it used (not ironically) more than once, and it was only the context of its use that led me to realize that the poster meant "voilà". More recently, I am seeing the phrase "low and behold" falling into common use. It is mostly from younger posters, which leads me to wonder if they are relaxing the reading requirements in schools these days, and just encouraging students to spell words like they sound.

What is even more depressing is reading posts from people claiming to be in university, but who have barely mastered the ability to string letters together.

im working in a gas station 2 help pay my way thru 2nd yr of college anyway some1 comes in and says they left there phone behind on accident at the pump and have i seen it and i say is it a modorola and they say yes and low and behold some1 left 1 just like it this morning and i reach under the counter and walla their's the phone and there all mad and say give me my phone people are so rude!

In fairness, I exaggerated this post a bit. Usually they are much longer - often dozens of lines unfettered by white space or punctuation. The worst of it is that the people who write like that don't know that they are awful writers, or if they do, then they take a weird sort of pride in their awfulness. I cannot remember a time when being ignorant, or underachieving was worn so openly like a badge of honour. It is not like horrible writing is a recent development, but this sense of people feeling so good about being so awful has an air of newness to it.