"cutest. picture. ever." bullshit!

We've all seen this poor behavior. As unregenerate children, we have probably done it ourselves. In the social media world, we want our friends to know how great of a time we're having or how wonderful something of theirs is, so we resort to hyperbole and punctuation abuse: "cutest. picture. ever." (This was an actual facebook comment made on a picture of a woman and her baby.) One of the major downsides to the Internet Age is that office speak travels like wildfire. (Office speak? Think of the rising intonation people use when describing the list of shit they did at work today.) This kind of behavior will not be tolerated in the Kingdom of Eric Parker for several reasons:

1) You sound like an idiot. If you verbalize that comment above aloud––"cutest. picture. ever." [emphasis added]––you sound like what people my age would call a stupid Valley Girl (not a good thing). It really translates to "Oh, my God, that is, like, the cutest picture, ever!" The Valley girl dialect, unfortunately, has become the dialect of reality television and much of everyday life. Avoid it.

2) You're following a trend, which makes you boring. Think of something original to say.

3) You're misusing the period. I know, rules are meant to be broken, you punker, but not in my kingdom. A period follows an independent clause that can stand alone. It does not mean a pause. It needs a noun and verb; that's it. Eric rules. That is a complete sentence (and true). If you insist on sounding like a stupid Valley Girl who works in an office, try this: "That is the cutest . . . picture . . . ever." At least you're using proper punctuation.

4) You're lying, on several fronts.

First, the said picture or nail job or day at the beach was probably not the cutest or best in the history of the world, or even your own dumb life. I get it: you're using hyperbole. You're smart. You're funny. All your friends like you. But good hyperbole, while always an exaggeration, captures an emotional truth: "It took an eternity for me to lose my virginity." We know, for most people who haven't entered a monastery, this isn't true. But the two to four (six? eight? ten? twenty? are you serious?) years it took from reaching puberty to losing your virginity felt like an eternity, and it gave most young boys a distinct understanding of what hell must be like.

Second, you're being insincere, which makes you a bad person, an ego stroker.

Third, you're lying. Especially in the case of the comment mentioned above: "cutest. picture. ever." The baby wasn't even that cute. The mom was actually much better looking. And on the scale of cuteness, human babies don't even come close to other animals. Do you need evidence?

The above image of a polar bear cub is, on a cuteness scale of one to ten, as close to a ten as you can get. The picture of the mom and baby, if we're being honest (and honesty is valued in my kingdom), would be a five.

So anyone who gets caught using the terminology and punctuation under question will automatically be ejected from the Kingdom of Eric Parker. Unless you're the cutest person I've ever seen. Good luck.