Self-Proclaimed Police Of Twitter Fail To Hear The 911 Call From Inside The Precinct

“What is it about human nature that we seldom feel grateful for such guidance?” asks a Times piece on those people who have decided to spend their leisure time nitpicking the expression modes of their fellow Twitter denizens, whether they’re as famous as Gen X crush object John Cusack (who apparently can’t spell!) or as everyday as a dude who’s just happy to be in slightly less financial ruin than Greece. Perhaps some of the uncharitable reaction comes from the internal contradictions of which these people are blissfully unaware — like, say, a self-proclaimed 140-character grammarian flinging around the phrase “grammar fail” when he wants to flag a wonky sentence? A true keeper of the English language might note that the rise of the word “fail” as a verb/noun/adjective/adverb/exclamation hybrid is one of the worst things that Internet culture has brought to the linguistic table. Which is saying kind of a lot, when you think about it.