People are terrible

[white_hart]

Seen on the Internet in the last 24 hours:

1. On a blog post introducing a new knitting design: “I love this pattern, but I wish you’d designed it for a different weight of yarn as I don’t have enough fingering weight.”

2. On the same post, in response to the blogger mentioning a recent change in her appearance, multiple people assuming pregnancy and one person saying “congratulations, but please don’t flood us with baby knitting patterns now”. (I assumed radical hairstyle change, which turns out to be the actual case. Fortunately the blogger is childfree by choice.)

(ETA: and now someone has commented on the post with the new hair asking if she donated her long hair to Locks of Love. Why would a U.K.-based blogger be donating her hair to a US charity, ffs?)

3. On a post using a word that means different things in different versions of English, a number of people from the country of the poster’s birth (but not the one they currently reside in) popping up in comments to make snippy remarks about how Word means X in their country, but if the poster meant Y...

Some days I think the human race deserves its inevitable doom, though I wish I didn’t have to be part of it.

Comments

[perennialanna]

There are charities that take cut hair to make wigs in this country too (the Duchess of Cambridge donated her hair when she had quite a haircut), but the person in question didn't have particularly long hair anyway! Also, I don't think they take dyed hair.

The pregnancy thing is just WTF: people being coy about pregnancy (and what in any of her writing over the years suggests she would be coy about it anyway?) tend to be a lot more twee (and more obvious).

[white_hart]

I was never sure how long her hair was - I’m not sure I ever saw a picture of her with it down. But if dyed hair is out and she has just mentioned giving up dyeing it then it’s an even more ridiculous question.

I find it weird both that that’s what people assumed, and how much the assumers are doubling down on their right to make assumptions about people and act on them without thinking about how that will affect the people they’re assuming about.

[caulkhead]

I'm glad I didn't read the comments. I just thought I like the look of a) the haircut and b) the cardigan.

[white_hart]

I don’t normally read the comments, but I happened to spot the people leaping to pregnancy congratulations on the previous post and then couldn’t stop myself looking at them on the follow-up.

[perennialanna]

I based my guess on pictures of her with her plaits loose rather than wrapped round her head, because I wore my hair plaited and pinned to my head for years and I plait L's twice a day so I have a fairly good idea of how much plaiting shortens it.

People! I got quite a lot of vocal misgendering on my way back from the monastery. Saturday night drunks and Reception children lack social filters. And internet commenters, it would seem.

[white_hart]

I don't remember mine ever being long enough to plait and wrap round my head, and at its longest it came about halfway between my shoulder and my elbow, so I assumed longer than that, maybe elbow-length? Which seems pretty long to me but mine has been short for 14 years and was bobbed for years before that so my perception is probably skewed.

[perennialanna]

She plaited the ends into each other at the top of her head, which only takes just past shoulder length.

[white_hart]

Goodness, I didn't even realise that was possible!

[perennialanna]

Needs clips and co-operative hair. I suspect yours would be too think (mine is very thin when tamed by plaiting).

[white_hart]

Co-operative is certainly not a word I have ever used to describe my hair (which is basically why I keep it short - the less there is of it the less of a pain it has a chance to be).

[ankaret]

Oh, how clever. I wonder if there is an instructional video on YouTube?

[white_hart]

There must be. (I have just googled dates and realised that I have had my hair short for about three months longer than YouTube has existed for. Then again, it hasn't really been long enough to plait this century. And now I feel much older than any amount of grey could make me feel.)