Why all the shouting?

[netmouse]

You know, in a lot of ways, I really appreciate the community at Ann Arbor eCycle. But somewhere around a quarter to a third of the responses to my postings of a guitar and a bike have been IN ALL CAPS!

Can anyone explain why any normal people would think that's a reasonable way to write to a person?

Comments

[shadowriderhope.livejournal.com]

Wow. I don't know, but it's a freaky thing. :(

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

BECAUSE THEY WANT TO BE CONSIDERATE TO THE HARD OF HEARING?

I don't know. My mom used to do her replies to my e-mails in all caps so that she could tell which bits were her and which were me, until I explained the yelling convention to her. For awhile it was a little upsetting to keep getting e-mails that said things like, "HAVE YOU CALLED YOUR GRANDPARENTS?" Fine, I'll call, just stop yelling!

[marsgov.livejournal.com]

These people a clueless, and while on the one hand you might be able to extract a better price from them, I'd prefer to deal with cluefull people.

[(Anonymous)]

it's a freecycling community. I'm not selling the guitar and bike, I'm giving them away.

[marsgov.livejournal.com]

You know, I have to wonder if that wouldn't make the transaction even worse.

[kyril.livejournal.com]

The old never learned the social convention, and/or are uncomfortable enough with the keyboard that they just use all caps because it's easier/less hard.

The young never learned the social convention or teh grammar, and were never taught to care.

The folks in the middle were probably the ones not teaching the young to care. Though remember, we're not exactly at 100% literacy in this country, and I don't know how low the standards for "literate" are.

[renniekins.livejournal.com]

well, you don't have to worry about using the shift key if everything is capitalized (or lower case). A poor typist might appreciate that.

where i work, on the old dos/mainframe apps, the people entering data were taught to keep their caps lock key on so data was uniform and easily searchable. so entering a name always looked like JANE DOE instead of Jane doe, or JAne Doe, etc.... it meant all their emails would be in caps, which would drive me crazy! But at least they had a reason of sorts.