>someone makes a thread on /pol/ about John Lennon's

>>17851883
Oh, forgot the 2/2.
boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/102640576#102646308

>>17851883
>Lennon, like many science fiction antagonists before him
Wanted to stop reading after that.

You do sound like a pretentious blowhard who tries to mask his lack of imagination and original thought with amount of words used. Worry less about how people perceive the shit you say and focus on what you say.

>>17851883

how old were you when you wrote this?your first paragraph could have been said in 2 words. your second paragraph is useless.i barely read the third one because I saw the word anime in it

im not going to read the 2/2 because the first bit is all inflated by how many words you used that pad your point that individuality is good or whatever and that science rules. its pretentious because you wrote a lot of shit that isnt really supportive of the idea no matter how you twist it, and the fact that you put that forward tells the reader that you still think what you wrote is somehow worth reading despite that glaring flaw.

you probably got the mark you got for trying hard and not for clear expression. while you write something try rereading it and then pretend to reply to it in your head with "why do I care" and see if you'd be able to tell someone why they shoul care based on the info in front of you

>>17851908
>You do sound like a pretentious blowhard who tries to mask his lack of imagination and original thought with amount of words used.
kek, this is the exact opposite of what I've been trained to do by my school, which is use as much words as possible. I need to retrain myself.

If I use less words, can I still use the "this is some sci-fi shit" angle without sounding pretentious? The song literally feels like it came from Evangelion or Bioshock 2.

>>17851919
>how old were you when you wrote this?
20, but it's about an experience I had when I was 14.

>you probably got the mark you got for trying hard and not for clear expression. while you write something try rereading it and then pretend to reply to it in your head with "why do I care" and see if you'd be able to tell someone why they shoul care based on the info in front of you
This is really good advice. Thanks!

>>17851958
>this is the exact opposite of what I've been trained to do by my school, which is use as much words as possible.
Yeah, school definitely teaches kids dumb shit like that with lazy word count requirements instead of focusing on the quality.

>The song literally feels like it came from Evangelion or Bioshock 2
It's shitty reasoning, if anything Eva/Bioshock 2 would sound like the song. If you want to reference sci-fi shit, find a contemporary work that predated it.

>>17851972
>>17851958
>http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit/
Is a decent start.

>>17851972
test

>>17851958

are you serious about writing that at 20? im 22 and not a particularly good writer since all I do is biology papers, but I was anticipating something like 17 or 18 in freshman year.

I disagree somewhat with the other poster's interpretation of wordcounts because that just tells you how much depth you need to go into for a topic.Schools don't really interpret that for you though for some reason, it's something i figured out when I got frustrated with bullshit assignments like 1000 word limit on a topic that requires around double that to explain properly. The key is they don't want you to explain properly, they want a topical overview.

A higher wordcount than you think is necessary requires a lot of exploration of nuance and detail for the topic which will probably end up as 40% proof and setup and 60% your own ideas and interpretation. The rssay you posted had too much proof and setup without much dissection of the topic before leading into your conclusions

>>17851883
I haven't read your essay - life is too short - but I can offer you this bit of comfort. Academic writing is by its very nature formal, erudite and, yes, a bit pretentious. So writing that works in a term paper (and may deserve a high grade) is likely to seem out of place in an informal discussion. (The opposite is also true - the casual reasoning and slang of a conversation won't work in a formal paper.)

So SOME of the negative reaction you got is because you were using the wrong kind of rhetoric for the situation.

>>17851992
>A higher wordcount than you think is necessary requires a lot of exploration of nuance and detail for the topic
Hence all the wordcount requirements are pretty silly and it'd be better to tell students whether they should give a quick overview or a detailed one. Some person can say much more in 500 words than another would in 3k, so the focus should be on content.

>>17852021

what a quick overview/ detailed overview entails is hard to quantify without basically giving someone a skeleton essay though. I can understand why a wordcount is used as a benchmark but I don't disagree that it's a difficult metric to interpret for someone who is still learning to write. im operating on the assumption that one learns very little about actually writing anything longer than a 4chan post throughout highschool, which was my personal experience and feels like it was the case here as well

>>17851992
>without much dissection of the topic
I'm not sure what you mean. You mean, like, elaborating on the history of the song and what communism is?

>>17852074
i mean your entire first bit is just an elongated introduction. You should have fit it into one slightly larger than average paragraph because of the essay's short length. because you spent 3 paragraphs introducing the topic and talking about your ninth grade choir experience, you only started saying things that mattered in the very last paragraph of 2/2. if you slashed the intro to one paragraph that would have left more space to delve into your topic sooner so that the reader isn't only just getting interested by your last paragraph.

>>17852089
Ohhh. That makes perfect sense. Thanks!