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CASE sensitive

There's something happening to all us regular blog-readers and instant-messagers, and I don't think I like it. I realized it the other day when I was buying some painfully expensive gas. I was using an automated machine that displayed the following text: "Select pump, then insert card". Being very clever, I inserted my card, then tried to select my pump, proving to anyone watching that they were dealing with an inattentive idiot. The machine responded back on the little LCD screen this: "Select pump, THEN INSERT CARD."

Now, I freely admit I was in error, but reading that statement caught me off guard. I felt a bit affronted and chastized. But why? It didn't say anything awful. But it didn't have to yell, I thought. And that's when it hit me. I was reading the capital letters in the context of online blogging/IMing, and I processed it as shouting. And, more embarassingly, I was affronted.

What kind of pussy Little Lord Fontleroy had I become? Fifty years of Peanuts comic strips used them exclusively, and somehow I managed to read what Linus had to say without breaking down in tears. But now a fucking gas pump has the temerity to talk sternly to me and I feel all shaky and hurt?

It's not just me. I've been in chatrooms where everyone gangs up on the one person typing in all caps, cajoling him to "stop shouting."  This is insane. What's gonna happen, all those capital letters are going to wake up the baby? Shatter a window? Are the neighbors going to call the cops if that jackass doesn't turn off his caps lock?

So I believe there's lots people out there, right now, WHO GET OFFENDED WHEN PEOPLE TYPE IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. And for some reason, I think this means something more, but I have no idea what. But I'm not going to let any stupid gas pump push me around anymore!