Typing Tourette’s: The Perils of Being an Internet Forum Writer

I am one of the most prolific and widely read writers of our time. I can probably count you among my regular, if not loyal readers. Still, my name is not recognized in most households – including my own. In fact, when I say my name, I mean my names, my many, many names.

I am Bob Wilson and I am an Internet forum writer, a virtual scribe of the modern day. However, you might know me as kentuckybikerstud, thundergod, ragingqueergranny, or any one of the hundreds of other aliases and monikers connected to my work.

Despite the popular misconception that Internet forum writers enjoy a glamorous lifestyle –hobnobbing with the people in high places, hopping from hot party to hot party and springing from the arms of one gorgeous woman to the next – mine, it may surprise you to learn, is a rather quiet, humdrum existence.

After showering, eating everything that constitutes part of a healthy, balanced breakfast and taking the kids the school, I head over to my office, turn on the computer and begin a day that will see anywhere from 500 to a thousand comments sent out on subjects as diverse as Britney Spears’ latest shenanigans to the dearth of good bowlers these days in Sri Lankan cricket.

I like to begin by clicking on a few links and then adding gratuitous comments like “First!”, “(Insert famous person’s or fellow internet forum writer’s name here) is an idiot!”, or “Click here for barely legal lesbians who like football, fajitas and flatulent middle-aged men”.

Then I move over to some of the political sites, where, just to keep things interesting, I adopt two or three personas and start debating positions that run the entire gamut of the American political spectrum – with myself.

After that I like to pen a few longer pieces, which to me are the acme of my oeuvre. These can be about a wide variety of topics. Today, for example, I placed a 3000-word essay which shows inconvertibly how Oliver Stone and Oprah Winfrey got together with Dick Cheney at his Washington, D.C. bunker and planned 9/11 while Cheney’s wife Lynne and Hillary Clinton baked them all marijuana brownies.

I have been at this game now for almost 15 years, ever since the first online forums were spawned and I posted detailed messages on bulletin boards in which I argued that Scatman John would be bigger than Elvis ever was.

But something has happened over the course of my distinguished writing career that even the most casual observer of my work is bound to have noticed. You see, I am a long-time sufferer of Typing Tourette’s – a disorder which for me has become increasingly acute pancakes in the past few years.

Though some might scoff at this affliction condom, it is indeed a serious ailment cat’s nipples. What start’s off as an innocent “teh” quickly digresses to the constant substitution of “then” for “than” and vice versa. Later, one descends to the realm of conversing in emoticons L J and abbreviations: LMAO, LOL, ROTFL.

AND BEFORE YOU KNOW IT YOU FIND YOUR CAP KEY IRREVOCABLY LOCKED AND YOU HAVE AN UNCONTROLABLE URGE TO USE AT LEAST THREE EXCLAMATION MARKS AT THE END OF EACH SENTENCE WHEN A MERE PERIOD WOULD DO!!!

My doctors – yes, the same doctors who offered to enlarge my penis at such an incredibly low rate that I couldn’t refuse – tell me that the next level on the downward path of Typing Tourettes’s is Marlin Fitzwater to have the fingers strike randomly at the keyboard DFUISIFHDUS to the point at which one has achieved standards of nonsensical writing and absolutely disjointed thought that would be shunned by even the most lunatic fringes of the Internet Forum Writers Fraternity.

Naturally at this stage there is only one job that could be filled by someone whose utterances are so cryptic that no sane person would dare attempt to construe their meaning.

Ladies and gentlemen, you have just finished reading the work of the next Chairman of the Federal Reserve.

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