'No Whinners Radio' Needs a 5th Grade Education

The 'No Whinners Radio' Facebook page header
The ‘No Whinners Radio’ Facebook page header

More than 3,000 peo­ple were invit­ed to the above pic­tured event on Facebook (offi­cial page), and who-knows how many out­side of Facebook. All of them sub­ject to the 5th grade edu­ca­tion faux pas. When I men­tioned mis­take to the page own­er, a woman pseu­do­ny­mous­ly run­ning the Net radio show and Facebook page as “Abbs Hotsmiles,” she told me the mis­spelling was inten­tion­al, that “it’s sup­posed to be funny.”

The owner of 'No Whinners Radio," a woman calling herself "Abbs Hotsmiles"
The own­er of ‘No Whinners Radio,” a woman call­ing her­self “Abbs Hotsmiles”. Ironically, she’s not even smil­ing in this pho­to from her Facebook page.

I would have a hard time swal­low­ing that jus­ti­fi­ca­tion from any­one, but much more so from a thirty-something woman refer­ring to her­self as “Abbs Hotsmiles” who writes with­out punc­tu­a­tion, cap­i­tal­iza­tion, or spell check the fol­low­ing descrip­tion of her Net radio show on its offi­cial page:

The crew at No Whinners 2 now has a new place to tell jokes and make you laugh and not be has­seled by trolls and face­book bans no bans here so we will be live crude and uncen­sored so watch our face­book page for details at www​.face​book​.com/​n​o​w​h​i​nners2

Here’s the 5th grade-level ref­er­ence to the rule about adding the “-er” suf­fix to words end­ing in “e.” Forgive the sim­plic­i­ty of the lan­guage and pre­sen­ta­tion; it’s meant for ele­men­tary school chil­dren, not for adults with Net radio shows and Facebook pages.

The 5th grade rule about adding 'er' to the end of words like 'whine'.
The 5th grade rule about adding ‘er’ to the end of words like ‘whine’.

Poster Girl for the Ignorant?

I don’t mean to single-out Ms., er, Hotsmiles. However, by enter­ing the are­na of pub­lic broad­cast­ing and pro­mot­ing her show with its igno­rant title and descrip­tion, she’s brought her­self to the fore as a face for igno­rance on the Internet.

The use of “whin­ners” instead of “whin­ers” is bad enough, but could be chalked up to a typo… Yes, I am ful­ly aware that, between the URL of her show’s web­site, its graph­ics and descrip­tion, the Facebook page title, head­er image, and URL, as well as an undoubt­ed num­ber of oth­er loca­tions in which “whin­ners” was used, Ms. Hotsmiles has to have typed “whin­ners” many, many times oth­er than in the sin­gle use shown above. Still, I could give her the ben­e­fit of the doubt: maybe “whin­ners” ver­sus “whin­ers” is a fre­quent point of con­fu­sion for her, the way many oth­ers strug­gle with “its” ver­sus “it’s” or oth­er such com­mon gram­mat­i­cal con­fu­sion com­mon amongst even the most edu­cat­ed of us.

Even some­how set­ting aside the title mis­take that inspired this edi­to­r­i­al, Ms. Hotsmiles reveals a gen­uine­ly wor­ry­ing igno­rance in the descrip­tion she wrote for the show as well as in a num­ber of oth­er places where she has brought her key­board to the Internet. The total lack of cap­i­tal­iza­tion and even the most fun­da­men­tal of punc­tu­a­tion indi­cates not that she failed to achieve a 5th grade-level edu­ca­tion, but that she may not have had the ben­e­fit of even com­plet­ing 1st grade where such lessons are taught, strength­ened, and engrained! And if Ms. Hotsmiles did make it at least through 5th grade, then the school sys­tem and her par­ents must have failed her in allow­ing her to either not learn or to for­get the rel­e­vant basics of writ­ten English.

But Ms. Hotsmiles’ writ­ing is not, in and of itself, what is tru­ly fright­en­ing. Far more trou­bling is the fact that Ms. Hotsmiles is mere­ly an exam­ple of any num­ber of online writ­ers whom each of us runs across daily.

What val­ue is lan­guage if not to com­mu­ni­cate clear­ly? That is the very def­i­n­i­tion of lan­guage, so if even its basic struc­ture and spelling are abandoned–without any of those 3,000 peo­ple caring–why use lan­guage at all? More to the point: how bad are we going to let it get before some­one starts call­ing out igno­rance like Ms. Hotsmiles? If mis­takes like hers become the norm, then tru­ly igno­rant peo­ple who haven’t been taught alter­na­tives, will assume such dialect hash to be the lan­guage. Then, when they for­get the rules or grow too lazy to fol­low what they’ve tak­en to be the rules, when they make mis­takes in the igno-speak they’ve learned, will those of us who can read and speak English—at least at a 5th grade level–be able to under­stand any­thing such peo­ple say?

Wellcum to Merica, evry1!

3 thoughts on “'No Whinners Radio' Needs a 5th Grade Education”

  1. SLH

    Ahem.

    1) If you are going to play the gram­mar elit­ist card, at least do it cor­rect­ly. Your gram­mar exam­ple is about cre­at­ing an adjec­tive using a com­par­a­tive or superla­tive form. “Whine” is not an adjec­tive and “whin­ers” is not a com­par­a­tive or superla­tive; it is a noun. The gram­mat­i­cal oper­a­tions are dif­fer­ent. Orthographically, the effect is the same in this sit­u­a­tion, but that is not an assump­tion you can make with­out under­stand­ing the con­text the oper­a­tion in rela­tion to its actu­al func­tion. Are you sure you prop­er­ly under­stand how the English lan­guage func­tions? If you are gonna sit on that high horse, please make sure you know how to ride. 

    2) I know your intent is to high­light the impor­tance of a good edu­ca­tion, but that isn’t what you are doing. Similarly, you don’t mean to sin­gle out the author, but that is what you actu­al­ly did. You brought up some­one as a focus of con­ver­sa­tion in order to mock them because they dis­pleased you. There’s a term for some­one who does that: a bully.

  2. Pariah Burke Post author

    SLH,

    Correct. The exam­ple I gave was for using a noun rather than an adjec­tive in the usage of, and by, “No Whinners Radio.” I knew the dif­fer­ence; you knew the dif­fer­ence. Many of the online resources exposed by a quick Google search explained the dif­fer­ence, but in the end I chose to high­light the sim­plest of the exam­ples I found so that the basic mes­sage would be as clear as pos­si­ble to those who would com­mit the mis­take in the first place.

    Do you hon­est­ly think that any­one who could write the above quot­ed pas­sage from the “No Whinners Radio” page sans even first-grade lev­el gram­mar would read or com­pre­hend an expla­na­tion of verb ver­sus noun ver­sus adjec­tive as well as their var­i­ous usages and forms? I found and high­light­ed the sim­plest, most quick­ly leg­i­ble inde­pen­dent link I found.

    On that point: I would­n’t qual­i­fy my response as a “gram­mar elit­ist,” but rather an English speak­er with a mod­icum of respect for the lan­guage and a dis­may at the ongo­ing degen­er­a­tion of the same. My qual­i­fi­ca­tion and yours of my above post, of course, are both expres­sions of our indi­vid­ual per­son­al opin­ions, and, as such, should be left to stand on their own with­out fur­ther debate.

    I inten­tion­al­ly wrote (in the blog post above as well as with­in this rejoin­der) at a low­er edu­ca­tion­al lev­el, using a more lim­it­ed vocab­u­lary, than that of which I’m capa­ble to keep the dis­cus­sion acces­si­ble to the sub­ject of the dis­cus­sion as well as to oth­ers who may share my desire for the main­te­nance of a base lev­el of lan­guage but who may not have tak­en their own edu­ca­tions in English as far along the same path as mine. In sim­pler terms: I wrote for the audi­ence, as any writer must.

    Thank you for the response, SLH.

  3. James

    you whiney lit­tle bitch next time you want to bash my fuck­ing chan­nel do your fuck­ing research Abbey does not own No Whiners Radio get your facts straight before you run your retard­ed fuck­ing mouth no one gives a fuck what you think or say do the world a favor and crawl back under your rock fucktard

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