University Study Proves What We’ve Always Known About MetalSucks Commenters

Have you ever commented on a MetalSucks post and complained about an occasional typo, grammatical mistake, or missed word? If so, then we’ve got some bad news for you: you’re a dickhead. And that’s not even my opinion. It’s science.

A recent study performed at the University of Michigan sought to find correlations between sensitivity to grammar mistakes and typos with certain personality types. The result? People who are quicker to point out typos and judge writers they don’t know on them are less pleasant and open-minded. Shocker, right?

Here’s a quote from the study:

Eighty-three participants read email responses to an ad for a housemate that either contained no errors or had been altered to include either typos, such as mkae (make) or abuot (about), or grammar errors, such as to/too, it’s/its or your/you’re. They rated the email writers in terms of perceived intelligence, friendliness and other attributes, as well as provided information about themselves.

At the end of the experiment, participants were asked if they noticed any grammatical errors in the responses. If they answered “yes,” they indicated how much the errors bothered them.

As expected, participants who reported grammar being important at the beginning of the experiment were more likely to be bothered by grammatical errors at the end, said study co-author Robin Queen, the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor and professor and chair of the Department of Linguistics.

In addition, less agreeable people are more sensitive to grammatical errors, while more conscientious and less open people are sensitive to typos, the researchers said.

Aha. So basically, if you decide someone’s a fucking moron because they made a minor mistake while, say, writing a quick blog post about a musician, you’re a jackass.

We here at the Mansion are just happy to finally have scientific backing for what we consider a life philosophy. We were happy to rest on the opinion that every person who spews venomous hatred at us because we accidentally misspelled a word is in fact screaming about their shitty personalities and terrible lives, but it was always a little unfounded. Now, we can cite a study. Ah, vindication!

So guys, feel free to keep behaving like something between a spoiled toddler and Donald Drumpf in the comments section whenever we make a typo. At least now we know that you’re the problem.