The Overcompensating Backslash
Mean geeks
You hear a lot of news reporters and journalists on TV and radio referring to website URLs these days. I have noticed, not without ire, that many of them make the mistake of saying “backslash” when they really mean “slash”, e.g. “Visit our site at http-colon-backslash-backslash www-dot-ctv-dot-ca backslash news.”
I can only imagine the media personality in her youth, back in the 80’s, perhaps working a lowly office job before she got her first reporter gig, running into an unpleasant DOS geek system administrator:
Pre-media personality: “Can you help me with this? I saved the file to C colon slash documents, but I can’t open it anymore…”
DOS geek system administrator: “It’s backslash, you idiot! C colon backslash! Don’t you know how to use a computer?!”
The emotional trauma of being yelled at by a scruffy, heavy-set man has undoubtedly stayed with our media personality all these years, and now she subconsciously overcompensates every time she sees a slash. That is, until this happens:
Media personality: “Can you help me with this? I want to put up a link for http-colon-backslash-backslash microsoft dot com backslash windows to this story I did on software obsolescence…”
Web geek system administrator: “It’s slash, you idiot! Don’t you know how to use the Internet?!”
Emotional Trauma 2.0
