chemistry, psa, annoyance
This is today's friendly reminder to the entire world that IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT GOOGLE RESULTS TELL YOU, "DIHYDROGEN MONOXIDE" IS NOT VALID NOMENCLATURE FOR WATER/H₂O, FOR THE SAME GODDAMN REASON WE DON'T CALL SULFURIC ACID "DIHYDROGEN MONOSULFUROUS TETROXIDE" OR SOME SHIT.
GOOGLE IS NOT AN ENCYCLOPEDIA, IT IS A STRAW POLL OF UNEDUCATED PEOPLE. If half the fucking population of Earth is convinced water is "dihydrogen monoxide" because of a piece of satire, it will tell you "water is called dihydrogen monoxide" and it will do it with a confident friendly smile.
re: chemistry, psa, annoyance
This fucker.
I'm looking for the "SLAP USER" button on my keyboard.
Wikipedia ONLY mentions "dihydrogen monoxide" as a parody. It says NOTHING about it being valid. I even went back and checked the version that was current the day they posted. Couldn't have been clearer it was satire. Bet they didn't even look at the actual article first. They just Knew A Fact and linked to the Fact Place.
This may seem trivial to you, friends, but the phenomenon it represents? It's the Root Of All Stupid and it's reason #1 after good old-fashioned greed that we can't have nice things.
chemistry, psa, annoyance
@zebratron2084 That is the thing most bothering me about that satire. (Well, that and people who keep on using it even though once you've read the satire article once or twice the joke is exhausted. But nerd culture has never accepted the concept of 'the joke wears out'. And, yeah, everybody hears it for the first time *sometime*.)
re: chemistry, psa, annoyance
@Austin_Dern What really burns me is the process we're talking about here:
1) Person makes a joke.
2) Entire Internet swarms on it as an excuse to be smug, because they can use it to prove other people wrong.
3) Entire Internet takes a factoid from the joke, gets it wrong, and repeats it all over-- with EQUAL smugness.
It's that ironic tension between mocking other people's ignorance and nestling in harder with one's own. I HATE it. I suspect I've done it too, and that makes me hate it even more. >_<
It's like, "You JUST got done making fun of someone else for uncritically believing something they saw on the Internet. D'ya think MAYBE you can polish up your own process a little next?"
re: chemistry, psa, annoyance
@zebratron2084 Yeah, that's a good articulation of what gives this a different annoyance-valence than, like, people who *still* want the cake to be a lie.
re: chemistry, psa, annoyance
@Austin_Dern Yeah. 'Cause I had an ACTUAL SERIOUS FACTUAL QUESTION and their goddamn meme trod all over all hopes of answering it correctly, because Being Cute On The Internet is more important than knowing about the universe.
And it feels like such a metaphor for EVERYTHING that is fucked up with us right now, because the cute memes ALWAYS win over the dull facts and I am almost literally sick to death over it, certainly sick to the point of daily existential dread and I am not exaggerating. 😱
re: chemistry, psa, annoyance
@Austin_Dern This "Galaxy Brain" garbage, too. How many 4channers are now running around confidenty parroting these as "official" names for water?!?
It's obviously just someone fucking around with nomenclature rules for fun, but THERE'S NOTHING TO TELL YOU THAT IN THE MEME.
I curse the uploader with one million lost exam points.
re: chemistry, psa, annoyance
We don't have time to call water anything other than water.
Hell, we call Titanium Tetrachloride "tickle four", because the formula is TiCl4.
re: chemistry, psa, annoyance
@Phorm Yeah, honestly, after all this nonsense I found it kinda comforting that your tribe has the sense to just CALL IT WATER, because everybody knows what f'in water is... -_-
re: chemistry, psa, annoyance
Once again I curse whoever decided that the plural of virus should be "virii".
NO
IT SHOULD NOT
It's "viruses"
re: chemistry, psa, annoyance
(OK, a few sources are pointing out that TECHNICALLY MAYBE you could call it dihydrogen monoxide-- but chemists just *don't* because it doesn't represent the actual chemistry very well at all. The best I'm seeing for an official IUPAC name is "oxidane," which is fascinating...)