That was my joke...

Don't steal it! I absolutely cannot stand when people tell a joke that you told them in the first place.  Now granted if I tell my father in New Hampshire a joke and he tells his golf friends, I won't know unless he tells me that they liked the joke. So that's not such a big deal. But if I tell a friend a joke walking to dhall, and then 30 minutes later when we get to class they tell it to a whole group of kids without giving me any credit, that's just annoying. At that rate, ask me to tell it, or at least mention that I told it before.  Sure, I probably did get it online, but since someone actively posted it that meant they wanted to share it with others to tell.  But I like getting a bit of credit if I find a real gem on a website, sue me.

Another pet peeve to go off of this: if you're going to "borrow" my joke, at least tell it correctly. If I hear you butcher a stellar gag that I previously let you in on, that's just embarrassing.  Again, ask me to tell it if you're going to tell it.  I was annoyed in the first place when you snatched my joke, but now you look careless and kind of dumb, honestly. Don't do that to yourself. It's pointless.

In the second half of a reading I did, called "An Introduction to the Blog", the author discussed a brief history of communication.  At one point, he talked about the period where oral narratives were the most common way of sharing stories or accounts.  I think blogs are kind of a new "oral narrative" because even though they aren't necessarily spoken (unless someone is a video blogger), they get shared and passed on. Blogs tend to keep their original message in a sense.  Oral narratives are kind of like that first grade (okay, freshman year of college...) game "telephone" where you and your friends sit in a line and whisper a message down to the end and see how much it changed.  I guess blog posts can change in that people can share them, then edit them by adding their own opinions and comments. But the original message is intact when it gets to the end.

Just don't steal other people's stuff. It's obnoxious.