Thursday, May 12, 2011

All those Amway "loosers"

Lynnea has been cleaning up my 15 year old Amway web page, and made a brief comment about the frequency of people who, in their hate mail to me, have misspelled the word "loser" as "looser." I've noticed this before and even mentioned it at the top of the site's guest book, because I don't see that particular typographical issue in many other places.

After some thought, I think I know why it comes up so often in this context. It's a unique meeting of three conditions:

  1. "Loser," while it seems like a simple enough word to me, has an unintuitive spelling in the sense that a single "o" makes the "oo" sound.
  2. People in written conversations don't use the word all that frequently. Amway people use it a lot because of the nature of the motivational material and how they're taught to regard those who criticize the group.
  3. Not to overgeneralize or anything, but it seems like a lot of them are pretty dumb.

12 comments:

  1. Do not underestimate the power of reason 3!

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  2. Oh the irony. That's up there with "u r so dubm"

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  3. Oh dude. I hear you are watching Game Of Thrones?
    What do you think so far?

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  4. Loving every minute, of course. Also eagerly awaiting book 5 in July.

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  5. It's pretty awesome up to now and it looks like they've put a wedge of cash behind it.
    I decided not to read the books until after each series. I read The Pillars Of The Earth halfway through the series and it ruined it.
    By the way it's good to hear you on the atheist experience again. I was watching some old episodes last night and stumbled across the Don Alhambra del Bolero episode.
    What happened to Ashley Perrien anyway?

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  6. sorry, posted that last one on my girlfriends account

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  7. i see that typo all the freaking time. Never really figured it out. First time I saw it was in college, and it was a Croatian guy, and he actually said it that way, so I sort of liked it. But always shocks me how often I see it.

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  8. Your Amway-bashing site is just your looser religion. You simply have faith that Amway doesn't enrich its recruits. If you would only allow the Holy DeVos into your heart, you'd know.

    "Thus shalt thou say unto the skeptics/loosers, I AMway I AM hath sent me unto you, thine fanny-packs groweth!"
    ~ 2 DeVos 3:13

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  9. haha, the lead up to the 3rd option, and the way the 3rd option was delivered made me low level giggle for about 3 minutes.

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  10. Anonymous7:52 AM

    I wish you a peaceful relaxing weekend

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  11. Aroha4:13 AM

    Best depiction of this I ever saw was a cartoon showing a thin spotty chinless guy sitting hunched and topless while an equally hopeless looking tattooist, tattooed " looser" in BIG letters across his back .

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  12. As someone with dyslexia I have to wince every time someone makes the bad spelling=stupid argument.

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