…and comments on the One and Other site around this project. Much has been positive, some negative, others repetitive but there has been one commentator that has stayed with me -‘Dictionary’. I found his comments particularly annoying which surprised me given some of the others on the site so I wanted to understand why.

Thinking about it, I believe it’s the structure he uses, the device of the dictionary itself. This structure implies knowledge, rationality, an understanding of true meaning we, as an average commentator, do not have. It is the implied intellectual superiority combined with anonymity, the hiding behind the lexicological structure, which really bothers me. So, I never thought I’d write this, but I realize I prefer the off the cuff invective in all it’s, often, badly spelt, badly argued glory.

Albeit, in your face, it strikes me as more understandable, though I might not agree with it, than the carefully constructed, carefully calculated rudeness to people who may or may not be some of the things Dictionary accuses them of. What I’m certain of, is they are not harming anyone in their hour, especially when they sit and view the world from ‘their’ plinth, but are opening themselves to the world in a way Dictionary seems unable to do.