So I’ve been looking at academic papers lately and I don’t know what the fuck is going on with citation rules. Has academia gone mad? The RULES have this bizarre inertia that has only RESISTED technology with MORE FUCKING RULES rather than used technology to apply OCCAM’S FUCKING RAZOR.
The MLA, or the FUCKING MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION has BLOCKED the MOST FUCKING IMPORTANT development in MODERN LANGUAGE for DECADES!!!! I’d tell you it’s all an insane conspiracy, ORWELLIAN to the farthest EXTREME, but it’s got to be complacency or something. Someone out there HAS to have seen this. It couldn’t be more OBVIOUS.
Actual text using the crazy new form of citation known as HTML, or HYPERTEXT:
When writing an MLA formatted document, an academic must create a list of sources, contextualize recommendations of other sources with footnotes, and use numeric reference to their own list of sources. This worked perfectly back in the archaic days of paper, but nowadays it seems like the inertia of power has persisted in bizarre ways that only hampers the quick access of information. There is an entirely new realm of discourse known as hypertext, definitively better than traditional text. According to the MLA rules, italics are only to be used for extreme emphasis and certain titles.
Never all-caps. Never HYPERTEXT.Son, those ain’t no complete sentence. F [Imagine this like the last sentence is the teacher writing in bloody red ink after CROSSING OUT your whole fucking sentence like it doesn’t mean SHIT AND FAILING YOU for not following some arbitrary insane rules cooked up by an evil Orwellian-named conspiracy. IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME!]
Remember, folks, it makes your paper SO MUCH MORE RELIABLE when you use DIFFERENT SOURCES that all tell you the same thing about a nearly static set of pointless authoritarian rules. Just hover over the links there for a second, if you’re still not sure this can work. YOU’LL SEE THE MLA DOCUMENTATION POP UP LIKE FUCKING MAGIC! You’ll see THE FOOTNOTES!!! My god, I wonder how many 60 year old folks on the MLA board of rulemakers have no idea that this kind of thing EVEN EXISTED UNTIL JUST NOW![pullquote]”Oh, those off-color underlined things, so fucking ugly. What the fuck is that? Not part of MY modern language! No SIR!” ~MLA Autocrat Olds Oldington V[/pullquote]
This is probably the reason why most academics despise Wikipedia. Wikipedia has told the MLA to take their rules and fuck ’em! Hypertext will slash your “Modern Language” rules down to a simple set of guidelines that ANY IDIOT can figure out. BUT WE DON’T WANT THEM GETTING TOO SMART, DO WE?
Hypertext is a SIMPLE thing to learn. It’s certainly simpler than the MLA rules. Oh yeah, did I mention it gets rid of all that BILE in brackets AND at the bottom of the page?
FUCK OFF MLA!!!!!
*I know we still need you, partially, for the remainder of time before all written text ever is digitized and freely available in a global public library FOR THE PEOPLE!
May Jesus forgive us of our sins, so that we may spend more of our time with substantive learning, rather than obsessing over antiquated and confusing systems of contextualization.
Amen.
