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u/Ok-Rich-3812 Mar 18 '26
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u/5h0rgunn Mar 18 '26
r/confidentlyincorrect (or it's bait)
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u/PallyMcAffable Mar 18 '26
“The best way to get the right answer on the internet is not to ask a question; it's to post the wrong answer.”
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u/_IratePirate_ Mar 18 '26
Ah yes, one of the cardinal rules of the internet along with the Streisand effect, and NEVER revealing your identity / location
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u/thebigj3wbowski Mar 18 '26
Also rule 34.
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u/lordsenneian Mar 18 '26
On windows you can’t Veiw rule 34 unless you delete system 32.
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u/thebigj3wbowski Mar 18 '26
Naturally. You should also fdisk/mbr and deltree *.*
Then use the safe commant Alt+F4 to reboot.
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u/Trezzie Mar 18 '26
Big talk coming from someone who revealed they lived on earth last year. I can say where you lived this year, but I'm going to protect your privacy.
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u/Valuable-Passion9731 Mar 18 '26
I personally think that the cyclic group of order 2 multiplied by the dihedral group of order 6 is actually not isomorpic to the dihedral group of order 12
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u/Ok-Application-8045 Mar 18 '26
Or you could just get a load of different but equally wrong answers.
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u/--frymaster-- Mar 18 '26
no. it is one nerd: jimmy wales. it was this nerd, and this nerd alone, who's need to connect built wikipedia.
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u/squareazz Mar 18 '26
*Whose
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u/--frymaster-- Mar 18 '26
sorry, english is my first language.
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u/NoDontDoThatCanada Mar 18 '26
Top joke. Usually l leave reddit on a 'that was terrible' note but l am using your comment to leave for the day with a smile on my face.
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u/3knuckles Mar 18 '26
No, because then it would have had to say "a nerd's". The absence of an article suggests "nerds" plural.
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u/EquipLordBritish Mar 18 '26
Also, it's just not reasonable to suggest that a single person was responsible for all of wikipedia.
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u/sn00pal00p Mar 18 '26
this nerd alone
Jimmy Wales does like to portray himself as the only founder but, as it is common with any type of founding, he of course didn't do it all by himself.
While in college, Sanger began using the Internet for educational purposes and joined the online encyclopedia Nupedia as editor-in-chief in 2000. Disappointed with the slow progress of Nupedia, Sanger proposed using a wiki to solicit and receive articles to put through Nupedia's peer-review process; this change led to the development and launch of Wikipedia in 2001. [...] Sanger's status as a co-founder of Wikipedia has been questioned by Wales,[5] but is generally accepted.[6][7]
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u/freewillcausality Mar 18 '26
*nerds’s
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u/Any_Medium_2123 Mar 18 '26
Nerds'
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u/Used_Intention6479 Mar 18 '26
"nerds' " is correct. "Nerd's" is not, in this context.
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u/EquEqualEquivalent Mar 18 '26
Thank god someone stayed awake in English classes
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u/Skafdir Mar 18 '26
This has not that much to do with English classes. There are different style guides.
Whether it should be " nerds's " or " nerds' " depends mostly on the publisher.
What is "correct" here is a matter of: Whom are you asking? According to this article, if you are following the Chicago Manual of Style you would write " nerds's ", while Associated Press would write " nerds' "
(Personally, I prefer it without an additional s - but I am not even a native speaker, so my opinion is not that important here, I would say.)
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u/Odd_Replacement_7223 Mar 18 '26
Yep. I've been writing for 30+ years and was taught the Chicago Manual, but was quickly convinced to switch to AP Style for professional writing.
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u/notyerson Mar 18 '26
I went on a whole journey where it bothered me, and then realized that was almost definitely the point. A+ troll.
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u/Expensive_Bison_657 Mar 18 '26
Yeah I know this is bait, don't fucking @ me.
Nerds' is correct. Ending with an apostrophe is grammatically correct to show possession for words ending in s. The nerds possess a need to correct each other. That need is the nerds'.
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u/OkProfessor6810 Mar 18 '26
Exactly it's a plural possessive
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u/SnooMaps7370 Mar 18 '26
also applies for singular words which end in 's' naturally, though that's less commonly used than simply slapping on an extra 's' with the apostrophe going between.
for example, if someone named Graves owns a repair shop, 'Graves' repair shop' would be grammatically correct, if somewhat ambiguous.
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u/chuff3r Mar 18 '26
This is actually a stylistic choice. You'll see both, and some publications will prefer Graves's
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u/Ok_Mistake9030 Mar 18 '26
Jesus' vs Jesus's was a quality debate on a grad school paper I got marked down for. Fought that and won an extra point back on a meaningless paper.
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u/BraxbroWasTaken Mar 18 '26
This is why sometimes I incorrectly use ‘s on words ending with s to denote singular. Sure, it’s incorrect, but it’s less ambiguous.
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u/SnooMaps7370 Mar 18 '26
it's actually not incorrect, several journalistic styles list it as preferred for exactly the reason you stated.
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u/Sikkus Mar 18 '26
OK Mr Expensive Bison, but why 657?
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u/Expensive_Bison_657 Mar 18 '26
It’s the default name Reddit gave me and I have never and will never care enough to change it.
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u/1stMammaltowearpants Mar 18 '26
And this is why y'all bisons are going extinct. You have to care, man! You just gotta'!
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u/chironomidae Mar 18 '26
Giving people usernames instead of forcing them to come up with their own stupid shit was one of the worst reddit changes ever :(
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Mar 18 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/EquipLordBritish Mar 18 '26
I can't think of a way that would make sense without them having been more specific. Then they should have written "a nerd's" or "this nerd's", or have referenced a specific 'nerd' prior.
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u/joshuakb2 Mar 18 '26
It's grammatically correct for plural words ending in s, but depending on your style guide, singular words ending in s should get the 's treatment. In this case it's completely unambiguous because it's a plural word ending in s anyway.
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u/EmbarrassedW33B Mar 18 '26
I was taught you could use either "nerds' " or "nerds's" and both are correct for a plural possessive but the latter looks like a fucking abomination so I refuse to acknowledge it even if its technically correct.
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u/Aeseld Mar 18 '26
Well, not always. Only when the s indicates that something is plural. James's dog, as a counter example.
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u/Top_Box_8952 Mar 19 '26
That’s what thought. The possession is the collective nerds, not a particular nerd.
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u/brwyatt Mar 20 '26
Sometimes, I feel like I'm the only person who knows and remembers and actually uses this rule... 😅
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u/Salarian_American Mar 18 '26
A friend of mine shared with me her foolproof method for getting responses to coding questions on coding forums.
You'd think it would just be "post your question," but that doesn't always get replies. So she started switching to a different account and posting an incorrect answer, which guaranteed that someone would be along very shortly to post the correct answer.
Because people care way more about correcting someone who's wrong than they do about helping people.
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u/SpareCartographer402 Mar 18 '26
That idea been going around reddit for a while. I started using it at work last year when my coworker wasn't getting responses from our boss I would just answer with my best suggestion and low and behold immediate response correcting me.
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u/DramaLlamadary Mar 18 '26
I can just imagine the boss coming by to tell you to stop giving incorrect answers, and you silently handing them an envelope with a pre-written reply saying "this is the only way to get you to respond in a timely manner to coworker's questions" and then... I dunno, getting fired, but god damn that would be satisfying for a moment.
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u/SpareCartographer402 Mar 18 '26
Haha luckily I was not very replaceable, can confirm because I have gotten reports that my replacement is struggling.
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u/Infamous-Oil3786 Mar 18 '26
They didn't actually think their friend originated it, that was just to elicit engagement.
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u/FixinThePlanet Mar 19 '26
That idea (Cunningham's Law) is a decade old, so I think it was going around the internet before it was going around reddit...
The original idea was much older, according to the person who named the law
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u/the_dayman Mar 18 '26
That actually has a made up name, it's called Cole's Law
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u/aaronstj Mar 18 '26
I know you're doing this on purpose to demonstrate the very thing we're talking about, but I still have to: it's actually Cunningham's Law.
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u/FixinThePlanet Mar 19 '26
My first thought was that this was meta commentary on Cunningham's law lol
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u/the_dayman Mar 19 '26
Oh yeah it was, I was accidentally thinking of shredded cabbage mixed with mayonnaise.
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u/Positive_Throwaway1 Mar 18 '26
Oh fuck you just unlocked a whole part of my brain. Thanks, freind!
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u/Glogbag1 Mar 18 '26
Because people care way more about correcting someone who's wrong than they do about helping people.
Exhaustingly cynical. What's to say that the incorrect advice doesn't pose as a perceived hazard that needs to be corrected before something goes wrong, even if that's just the grief caused by lost time? By excluding any other potential reasons the conclusion is incorrect by necessity.
I think it's more realistic to view it as a question of motivation & the lack of it, rather than a question of people wanting to act superior.
I know that the statement can even be reapplied to what I've written here, but it's too annoyingly cynical to ignore it.
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u/Salarian_American Mar 18 '26
Well it's nice to see someone push back against cynicism at least. Keep fighting the good fight. I have mostly thrown in the towel on resisting cynicism after repeatedly being burned by a lack of cynicism but hang in there.
But also:
What's to say that the incorrect advice doesn't pose as a perceived hazard that needs to be corrected before something goes wrong, even if that's just the grief caused by lost time?
If they care so much about time lost to the problem, then why didn't they reply until someone posted a wrong answer? Somebody was already losing time before someone posted the wrong answer, and they didn't care enough to reply.
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u/Googlebright Mar 18 '26
Because people care way more about correcting someone who's wrong than they do about helping people.
We're not gonna make it, are we? People, I mean.
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u/NeilJosephRyan Mar 19 '26
I've been considering posting inaccurate/overly simplified history memes in that sub to learn more about history.
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u/Pendraconica Mar 18 '26
The meta pedantry is literally beating me over the head right now.
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Mar 18 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/No_Television6050 Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 18 '26
[deleted] ppV a3WNiaeM9qQXzdAEDsPn6S
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u/Dramatic-Classroom14 Mar 18 '26
I take a Japanese class at my college. I have a teacher and two tutors who are all Japanese natives.
They laugh when I say they have better English than most Americans, and I have to completely deadpan and just say “no, seriously, you all do actually speak better English than Americans.”
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u/TheHumanPickleRick Mar 18 '26
*its
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u/No_Television6050 Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 18 '26
[deleted] hIdWzHSB6vmPUhhHvCEVTEOwWNbwazbEgt9uYXAAC7WJtkB4FcL czCeULPRvTils4CjyOQGZednwO19Sq7s8OBrVEFRJD
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u/zap2tresquatro Mar 18 '26
it’s
I’m so tempted
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u/No_Television6050 Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 18 '26
[deleted] rJl inaBl4CeDJrjbuXQnXDq1E5dG4mt6Xazzi484Ws5exF
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u/Ambitious-Regular-57 Mar 18 '26
Meta Pedantry will be the name of my next Experimental Indie Electronic Trap project
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u/bonsaiaphrodite Mar 18 '26 edited 9h ago
The original post content no longer exists here. The author used Redact to remove it, exercising their right to control their data & privacy.
Chief fine saw depend doll selective paltry
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u/amglasgow Mar 18 '26
Nerd is not a collective noun.
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u/bonsaiaphrodite Mar 18 '26 edited 9h ago
The original post content no longer exists here. The author used Redact to remove it, exercising their right to control their data & privacy.
Waiting alive sort jar nutmeg full
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u/voyaging Mar 19 '26
It feels to me like if you used that form it would be more appropriate to use “one another” than “each other”
“Man’s need to correct each other” sounds awkward vs “Man’s need to correct one another,” at least to me
Ignoring the absurdity of using “nerd” as a collective lmao
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u/Zarathyst Mar 18 '26
I swear that the same people whom misuse " 's " are the same who forget about PEMDAS.
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u/GreatCircuits Mar 18 '26
Who*
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u/joshuakb2 Mar 18 '26 edited Mar 19 '26
Clause A: I - subject swear - transitive verb that <clause B> - noun clause object Clause B: the same people - subject <clause C> - adjective clause describing the subject are - linking verb the same - object <clause D> - adjective clause describing the object Clause C: who - subject (therefore not whom) misuse - transitive verb " 's " - object Clause D: who - subject (therefore not whom) forget - intransitive verb about PEMDAS - prepositional phraseCorrections welcome, I'm not an English teacher lol
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u/DoverBoys Mar 18 '26
A trick to figure out "who or whom" is to try fitting "he or him" respectively. In this case, it's "he misuse" or "him misuse". Since "he" fits, it's "who".
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u/CueAnon420 Mar 18 '26
No, but I do think about the fact that when you provide the world a centralized source of free information, it triggers the dictators and authoritarians who then begin to target it and attempt to eliminate it.
Just ask MAGA.
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u/Squirmme Mar 18 '26
It’s ‘s to show plural possessive if the word is already a plural, such as children, men, women.
Nerd is not plural, but nerds is, so nerds’ to show plural possessive
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u/Dominarion Mar 18 '26
Talking about pedantic nerditry...
My 2 cents. The Library of Alexandria wasn't concerned with knowledge. It's goal was to hoard greek writings. It didn't care about Egyptian, Babylonian, Carthaginian or even Roman knowledge. It didn't share information at all.
Wikipedia however is about everything human for every human for free. Losing Wikipedia would be far more damaging to humans than losing the L of A ever was.
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u/Lady_of_Link Mar 18 '26
Teachers where always claiming how you couldn't use Wikipedia as a source because it was oh so easy to put fake information on it, well I once tried to put fake info on it as part of an effort to prank someone, the info was gone so fucking fast they didn't even get to see the page. :(
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u/Character-Actual Mar 18 '26
No dumb teachers said that and it just stuck. Wikipedia is sourced, you shouldn't site the wiki but it's a great starting point
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u/ThisMachineKillsWOB Mar 19 '26
Find something you're an expert on and read its wikipedia article. You may be surprised how many mistakes you find.
Wikipedia's power users are laymen, and it's worth remembering that.
Your teacher doesn't want you to cite wikipedia because it's malleable. It may be changed between the time you read something and the time when your teacher wants to check your citation if something looks odd. Even if the information is not fake, what you see and what they see may be different. As opposed to a book at the library which will remain the same.
As a research tool, it's only really useful to get a generic overview and find some starting sources.
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u/Critical_Seat_1907 Mar 18 '26
I'm pretty sure that's how the original Library of Alexandria was built as well.
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u/YoureProbablyAB0t Mar 18 '26
You should download Wikipedia and consider donating.
Don't let the fascists have it.
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u/Demonokuma Mar 19 '26
Thats the entire reason i trust wikipedia for info. There will always be a person to correct things.
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u/LaserGadgets Mar 22 '26
I am a bit confused, my english is not perfect but pretty good, is nerds' not correct? Because its not one nerd, its nerds correcting each other. Need of nerds. Nerds' need!?
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u/No_name_Johnson Mar 18 '26
🎶 If you want it to be possessive it's just I-T-S 🎶
🎶 But if you want it to be a contraction it's I-T-apostraphe-S 🎶
Scalawag
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u/Sweetishdruid Mar 18 '26
And to think that it will all go away because we lost net neutrality and the government is requiring them to pay thousands weekly for years. Coming all out of their own pocket and if you dont tip them its all gone
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u/THE-ARCHlVlST Mar 18 '26
Thay and the Minecraft open library. Forget what its actually called though. It may be the library of Alexandria actually.
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u/LTinS Mar 18 '26
nerd - singular
nerds - plural
nerd's - singular possessive
nerds' - plural possessive
Jess - singular (get a girlfriend already)
Jesses - plural
Jess's - singular possessive (but dude, give her some space)
Jess' - also acceptable singular possessive
Jesses' - hard to pronounce plural possessive
person - singular
people - plural
person's - singular possessive
people's - plural possessive
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u/NotThatAngel Mar 18 '26
Cunningham's Law is to Wikipedia as greed is to business.
I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, or do I even need to add this?
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u/ThatUsernameIsTaekin Mar 18 '26
The Guinness Book of World Records was stated on a foundation of drunk people trying to one-up each other
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u/Various_Art Mar 18 '26
Imagine what we could build if Civil Engineers were all told the other one is incorrect.
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u/Enve-Dev Mar 19 '26
Fun fact. That’s basically how the original library of Alexandria started too.
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u/Barbafella Mar 20 '26
It removes UFO information, Guerilla Skeptics are apparently afraid of anyone getting hold of information, so I no longer use the site.
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u/meleaguance Mar 23 '26
Project gutenberg or internet archive are more similar to the library of alexandria, or even just the Internet itself.
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u/PunkTyrantosaurus Apr 04 '26
I am such a nerd. because I want so badly to be like no they were correctly referring to plural nerds needing to correct others
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