Because I have a private account, every so often I get follow requests on Instagram account. Other than wanting a follow back I have no idea why most of these people ask to follow. I’m sure a lot of them are bots. Several have been (supposedly) young women with Only Fans or porn site links in their profile. It is rare that I give one the o.k. (the okay?).
Today I got one from someone named Daniela. Another private acount. She had a pleasant enough profile pic. In addition to it she had a quote, as some people do. Here’s hers: “People will quit on you. you gotta get up every day and make sure you never quite on yourself.”
Daniela, I guarantee that I’ll never quite on myself. In fact, I never quite at anything. I’m not a quiter. But let’s not make fun of Daniela who appears to be a real person and based on her smile, polo shirt and flashing the peace sign is likely a heckuva nice person. But Daniela, if somehow you stumble upon this post (imagine the odds) let me suggest to you the art of proofreading. It’s rather simple. Read over what you’ve posted and make sure that there are no typos in it. Especially if this is essentially your public face. Lord knows my blog has been littered with typos over the years, many of which I still haven’t caught. But to have one in your profile, a short one at that, well, come on.
By the way her quote was followed by a series of emojis most of them of the heart, kissy face variety. I am not a snob about emojis as I used to be. I occasionally employ them in text messages as I find them a fun way to emphasize certain points but I would never insert one in an email or on a message board post. I have stuck a few on tweets but never on Instagram. I do feel that many, many, many people overuse them — a lot of these folks can be excused on account of being 14 years old. With one notable exception I do not like to see a long row of them in any context from anyone out of their mid teens. The exception is Ringo Starr. He was a Beatle so can do whatever the fuck he wants. Ringo always peppers his tweets with emojis with a special emphasize on peace and love two words he uses extensively. Let me here further add if someone is going to overuse any two words in the English language peace and love seem like really good choices. Better than using xylophone and haberdashery or incontinent and bestiality.
Okay I’ve made a meal out of one lousy typo. Hopefully someone will point it out to Daniela and after an initial flush of embarrassment at her faux pas, she 'll fix the damn thing.
(Here’s an interesting typo from history that I learned about on that Internet thing everyone is always talking about: In 1870, a German chemist named Erich von Wolf was measuring the iron content of various foods. A misplaced decimal recorded spinach as having 35 grams of iron rather than 3.5 grams. It took 67 years for this mistake to be discovered. In that time, spinach’s reputation for being an iron-rich superfood firmly took hold, helped significantly by the cartoon character of Popeye the Sailorman, who owed his bulging muscles to the vegetable. Even after the error was unearthed by a team in 1937 and more accurate figures began to appear, people still wholeheartedly believed in the immense strengthening power of spinach. To this day, its exaggerated reputation as a superfood has survived.)
My final advice to one and all is that if you find you’ve made a typo merely correct it. Don’t quite. That would be quit stupid. Or words to that effect (not affect).
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