The Bill (again)

[Paxosmotic]

Warning, if you're not into metaphors, do not read this post. Also, if you want to be high and mighty and use the word tragedy and innocent lives 17 times to show me how great a person you are, don't read this post. It will offend you.

You know what this whole situation reminds me of? The day after 9/11. The day after the mourning. 9/11 was the day where everything was so awful. 9/12 was the day where every person you met knew exactly what was going to happen. Everything was "we're going to...", everyone was so certain about everything. That's what this all reminds me of. I was just reading through the legislation forum and some of the posts in there are amazing. Some people are like "this is the end of online poker", and others are like "this will not affect anything."

I don't know, maybe it's the fact that I know what the words gerund and infinitive mean, but it drives me up the wall when people have such a casual relationship with the English language.

Example:

Incorrect: "Online poker is over!"
Correct: "Online poker will likely become increasingly difficult to play, resulting in a shrunken player base consisting of the more dedicated players."

See what I did there? I qualified the statement as a likely outcome. Every time I see a sentence like "problems with cashouts will occur" or "online games WILL be shutdown in the USA" (two quotes from the same post), it makes me want to punch a 9th grade English textbook. I hate predicting the future. It's why I don't use the word "will" in an unqualified manner.

Think of it like this. If you were one of my troops (I'm in the military), and I gave you an order, which one is correct?

"Get this to me by Friday."
"You will get this to me by Friday."

The first is an order (call it a strong suggestion), the second is predicting the future. If I say "you will" do something, it's very easy for you to say "no, I won't."

This post is MILES off topic by now (oy, 5am), but yeah the point was that I'm sick of all of this sky is falling talk from people who have no [censored] clue about anything.