

The Internet is about to die? - yarapavan
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2009/10/the-internet-is-about-to-die-literally-die.ars

======
StrawberryFrog
That's a horrible title, to be a pedant. Unless the internet is actually
alive, it cannot "literally die". I find it hard to read the rest after that.

Or is this an ironic use of the non-literal use of the word "literal"?

~~~
smanek
Ironically, one of the definitions of 'literally' is 'figuratively'. This has
been the case for over a hundred, and many acclaimed authors (Fitzgerald,
Joyce, etc) have used it in this sense.

Technically, it's a 'janus word,' which means it has two definitions that are
antonyms. The canonical example is 'cleave' which means both separate and
adhere.

~~~
StrawberryFrog
It's a sense that I, and other people, strictly avoid. Why use "literally" to
mean "very" but "not literally"? It adds nothing but confusion. I would say
it's an error, but if you want to be pedantic the rules describe usage, not
prescribe it.

------
jacquesm
Linkbait, the article is in fact a rebuttal of that.

~~~
timwiseman
Yes, but the poster used the actual title of the article, which is the norm.
This time the title was deliberately sarcastic, but that was not yarapavans
fault.

And it was a good and interesting article, just of much less significance than
it appears on a non-sarcastic reading of the title.

~~~
jacquesm
I'm all for descriptive titles. If a title is linkbait, even if it is
'original' then I'd prefer it if people edited the title to make it more
reflective of the content than to 'blindly' keep the original title.

Otherwise sites that use linkbait titles would get a whole pile more visitors
from HN because of the 'originality' of the titles.

~~~
timwiseman
You do have a good point, but I do not think either ArsTechnica or the poster
here was intentionally setting up linkbait. Viewing the title on their front
page (where they italicize key words and include a slightly longer blurb) it
is clearly being ironic, and I think the poster was just following the
tradition here of using the original tighter.

------
hvs
Or, you could read the article and realize that they refute all of the
arguments to that effect.

