Yesterday I received this update on my cell phone from Twitter:

(misspants): @babygirlxo: While I know that’s true, it makes me feel a lot better just that it’s there. Utah is f******g retarded and I hate it.

I’m not interested in forwarding the profanity, so I’ve edited it. Actually, the profanity itself isn’t the main issue. I expect that some folks on Twitter will use profanity. There is no reason … no real justification … it’s just that they take the low, vernacular road rather than trying to say something in a more profound way. Since Twitter is more of a casual conversation, some people use profanity because that’s the way they talk normally. And that’s part of the disturbing trend.

I got the update from Twitter because I track the keyword “Utah”. I don’t live there, but have an interest in what’s happening in Utah. That’s not the only keyword I track, but so far it’s the only keyword that has attracted a comment like the one that @misspants made. (As a clarification, in the Twitter language an ampersand preceeds the user’s screen name, which may not be their username, to signify who is the subject of the conversation.) She has no expectation that her tweet would be private, even though it was in response to something that @babygirlxo had said. If it was to be private, she would have designated the update as a “direct message” and I wouldn’t have received it, along with everyone else who tracks any of the words in her tweet.

So, I now have an impression of @misspants that perhaps she didn’t intend (or perhaps she did?). I think of her as being uncouth, uneducated, helpless, and well, dumb. So what qualifies her as an expert on Utah? Does she mean the state, the people, or both? The State of Utah seems to be a good place since hundreds of thousands of people each year make their way deliberately to Utah to go skiing, hunting, fishing, snow machining, mountain bike riding, back packing, camping, and playing. If the State were retarded, I think that wouldn’t be the case.

Does she then mean the people living in Utah? There are a couple of million people living in the State of Utah. According to the Census Department, more than 60% of the population of Utah who are twenty-five years old or older have attended college, or graduated from college, or hold advanced degrees. That’s about ten percentage points more than the general U.S. population. That doesn’t seem to fit the definition of being retarded.

Perhaps she is talking about a particular group of people in Utah. Most likely the people she is having to associate with either at school or work. If so, that is very unfortunate, but that small population doesn’t generalize to the whole state. There would be some redeeming value if she were not just complaining, but rather doing something to improve the situation, either her own circumstance or the perceived situation in general, but that seems too much for me to expect from her. My impression is that she only wishes to complain in some way that she perceives to be shocking.

This tweet from @misspants is only one in what seems to be trend, particularly among younger folks (perhaps because they’re more Internet savvy?) of pushing the envelope downwards. Trying to be increasingly more crass than someone else. Vilifying anything and everything just to do so. I don’t like it at all.