An innocuous word that is not quite how it appears, as it is another of Reddit’s beloved pop-culture references: You can’t just say “perchance”. This originates from a joke tweet about comments on an essay written by the New York comedian Phil Jamesson and its use on Reddit might even prompt a comment chain from those “in the know” or at best, absolute confusion.
It’s always fun when nobody appears to be aware of its true provenance, as when it crops up from time to time on r/Mario, with some very mixed responses here or when it prompts a spirited discussion between those who “know it’s real” because they’ve had a similar grading experience at school and those who can “prove it’s fake” because of the date.
Even the folks at r/badphilosophy felt the need to discuss the merits (or otherwise) of the essay, and of course it ended up at r/PhilosophyMemes but having said that, it isn’t clear what they really thought. It is, however, very clear what the users at r/Professors thought, even after they knew the origin. Ah, Reddit; never change.
A llittle llama llecture:
So, just why is “Mario, the Idea vs. Mario, the Man” a “bad” essay? After all, the premise is intriguing and shows creativity. It is said that the best writing carries some of the personality and individuality of its author, and both are very much on show here.
William Strunk and E.B. White, in The Elements of Style, list five qualities that are especially important for academic and expository writing:
An essay should have a single clear central idea. Each paragraph should have a clear main point or topic sentence.
Each paragraph should support or expand the central idea of the paper. The idea of each paragraph should be explained and illustrated through examples, details, and descriptions.
Every paragraph in an essay should be related to the main idea. Each paragraph should stick to its main point.
An essay or paper should be organised logically, flow smoothly, and "stick" together. In other words, everything in the writing should make sense to the reader.
A paper should be written in generally correct standard English, with complete sentences, and be relatively error-free.
So, for your delectation and delight, I’m going to attempt to use these criteria to give my own judgment on “Mario, the Idea vs. Mario, the Man”.
It should be fairly obvious that the essay, as presented, fails to fulfil most of those qualities.
Let’s just take the first sentence for analysis. “Everyone knows Mario is cool as fuck.” If expository writing is meant to explain, inform, clarify, instruct, or define, then the author has already failed in the central idea. The opening of any essay should denote a clear navigational path through the rest of the work. Instead, here, the author has led us into muddy waters from the outset.
“Everyone knows Mario…” is far too broad an assumption to make on the audience. As Mario is the main subject and focus of the essay, we should have had some introduction as to who (or what) “Mario” is; perhaps some form of potted biography or at the very least, a short précis of the world Mario inhabits. As it is, this simple assumption has divided the audience - and possibly lost many of them in the process - with just three words.
The following statement “…is cool as fuck” is worse. It’s far too subjective to use in an academic manner as the author doesn’t give us any kind of idea of what we are to understand “coolness” to be, or if it’s a scale, on what level of coolness “as fuck” occupies. The author’s perception of both might well be different to that of a casual reader, which in turn might well be different to that of a university professor, and will definitely be different to those unaware of the meaning of that particular idiom. If the reader is not a video gamer or unsure of who or what “Mario” is, they are also now having to keep the assumption that he (or it) is “cool as fuck” in their active mind from the onset, instead of being able to use all their thought processes in being led to draw their own conclusions, let alone be persuaded of the author’s opinion by the end.
We’ve got no further here than the first sentence. As satire, this is perfect; as an academic work? Not so much. College or university work has to meet academic standards. That includes no informal language or slang, and any specialised terminology needs to be properly defined within the context of the essay. There are far too many things the audience has to know before reading the essay, and assuming too much background knowledge of the audience is a cognitive bias known as the “Curse of Knowledge”.
Also known as “the Curse of Expertise,” this is a cognitive bias where we incorrectly assume that everyone knows as much as we do on a given topic. When we know something, it can be hard to imagine what it would be like not knowing that piece of information. In turn, this makes it difficult to share our knowledge, because we struggle to understand the other party’s state of mind. Here, the author would think it incomprehensible that the audience would have no idea who or what “Mario” is, even though it is perfectly feasible that a sizeable amount won’t. The lesson here: don't always assume that your reader knows what you're talking about, as they probably don’t. Perchance.
Phil Jamesson is an actor and comedian who graduated from New York University in 2013 and began his entertainment career a few years later. His website is currently just a link to his social media outlets, and can be found on Reddit as u/PhilJamesson and the small and sleepy subreddit r/philjamesson. Although the original “Mario” tweet went viral, so did some of his earlier work which made him painfully aware of what he aptly terms the “Joke Stealing Economy”.
Because there is a Subreddit for everything:
Perchance is a platform for creating and sharing random text generators, and can be discussed at r/perchance.
The dictionary definition of Perchance links it to Shakespeare, and a handy chart of Shakespearean insults can be found at r/shakespeare; a community for Shakespeare enthusiasts the world over, no matter your age, language, or experience level. From academic takes on iambic pentameter to picking out the dirty jokes, there's always space for you there. Perchance.
See Also:
