Our newly crowned SUPERTHREADER C.J. Wolfe wonders about the SIGNIFICANCE of the postmodern yet conservative use of ALL CAPS:
To kick-start the manifesto John, here’s a question that I’ve been wondering about the POMOCON persuasion ever since I started reading and posting on this blog:Is there a rhyme or reason behind the various bloggers’ use of ALL CAPITAL LETTERS?
Most of the other blogs I read don’t use caps the way that the pomocon posters do. As far as I can tell, the capital letters are used mainly for 1) keywords, 2) emphasis, 3)humor. I think it’s a nice invenzione, even if Pomocon wasn’t the first blog that used caps this way. Not all the posters on here use them, but Lawler usually does and sometimes Carl does I think; as a commenter I sometimes do too in order to fit in. But I was wondering if there were additional unspoken rules to their usage on POMOCON
Many do find this usage less quirky than MORONIC. I think a FIRST THINGS editor sent a style sheet to all bloggers mainly to stop it. And there may be a strong correlation between using ALL CAPS and the inability of the mainstream conservative blogs to take us as seriously as we deserve.
The reason the LOGOS of ALL CAPPING can’t be made conscious is that there really isn’t one. My view, which isn’t WAY EXISTENTIAL (note the pop cultural reference to CLUELESS), is that blogs should be very informal, fairly rude, and just FUN (which is a lower pay grade than witty). You could say CONVERSATIONAL or SOCRATIC if you want. But don’t. There’s no LOGOGRAPHIC NECESSITY here. Blog posts are necessarily done in a hurry. David Brooks or our friend ROSS might have a whole week with nothing to do but write a single column, but . . . When I randomly post in the form of numbered lists, I always have an odd number of points and often SEVEN. That’s to have fun with those who would wonder about the DEEP POINT of the point in the middle. And what’s more fun than THAT?
I also hate academic forms—beginning with footnotes—because they’re boring and I invariably SCREW THEM UP.
So italics vs. CAPS—in my view no sensible person should care. So the use of CAPS begins with TITLES and all words that need to be EMPHASIZED. It’s quicker to type CAPS, and it’s harder to italicize on this blog than it ought to be.
Being POSTMODERN, we tend to be PERSONAL and EMO. So there’s A LOT (and I certainly say a lot A LOT) to call attention to. You might otherwise miss references to ME.
Or BEING postmodern, we tend to mock being PERSONAL and EMO. Blogging is nothing if not full of displays of VANITY and SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION. A great men wrote that most human misery comes from being unable to sit in front of MY computer and not blogging.
The POINT of all this is that I’m all for C.J. and John and Carl getting more INTENTIONAL about postmodern yet conservative BRANDING. Thanks to MEGATHREADER John Lewis and every college president and parasite consultant in the world, I’m now very intentional about banding. I’m not necessarily much good at it: RALPHISM, for example, has only caught on among our bloggers and threaders, despite it clearly BEING—both VERTICALLY and HORIZONTALLY on the transcendence-meter—a fundamental alternative in contemporary thought.
