Thursday, November 22, 2012

Heading over the physical cliff

This one is also from Indecision Forever, and it's pretty funny - especially the guy handing out financial advice who seems to be confused about this "cliff" we're heading towards:
While the majority of people pretending to worry about the "physical cliff" are having a laugh, a small but vocal minority of Americans seem to be convinced that Congress is literally going to push us over the side of a mountain…

When looking for investment advice, finding a financial adviser who doesn't know the word "fiscal" is always my first order of business…

Maybe he thinks throwing grandma off the cliff is how Obamacare's Independent Payment Advisory Board is going to work.

Sorry Jon, pretty sure the physical cliff is mostly attributable to Thanksgiving, not Obama.

Funny, huh? But let me point out that I'm (mostly) laughing with these people, not at them. The fact is, Twitter seems to be designed for people to make fools of themselves. If you're a fool already, Twitter certainly doesn't help (witness Donald Trump), but you don't have to be a fool to make a fool of yourself on Twitter.

I'm sure these people knew, if they stopped to think about it, that it's a "fiscal" cliff, not a "physical" cliff. Certainly, a financial adviser would know that. But Twitter is designed for speed, not reflection.

And it's just human nature to type the wrong word sometimes. We all do it. Your brain is always ahead of your fingers, but muscle memory lets us continue to type without really thinking about it. By the time their fingers got to "fiscal," their brain had moved on.

As I say, we all do it. That's why you proofread. (And even then, we all do it, sometimes.) But Twitter is designed for speed, not exposition. Twitter is designed for expressing anger or outrage or any fleeting thought off the top of your head, not rational discourse. Twitter really does seem designed specifically for people to make fools of themselves.

So yes, I think this is really funny, but not necessarily a reflection on those fine people. Clearly, I wouldn't agree with the latter two about politics, but I sympathize with this kind of mistake. We all do it. It's just very easy to do. These kinds of things just happen when you right to quickly. :)

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