Know how you take apart an expert witness in court when you have no standing to assail their expertise?

point out typos in their report, try to trap them in meaningless imprecisions ("you said it was 74 degrees that day, Mr. bl00, when in fact the weather report clearly indicates it was 73!") and otherwise assail the tedious, unimportant aspects of their testimony so that the content thereof is called into question by the lay audience.

Know how you belittle an essay on the Internet when you have nothing to say about its greater point?

go after the grammar.

Any asshole that goes "they're" in the comments is saying "your argument is invalid - you made a typo." It's a dismissive, disrespectful, disdainful approach to discourse whose sole function is to shut down dissent and deny the essayist an audience through disqualification.

and it works. That's why you do it. It's not because you're a "would-be academic" it's because you've learned that you can win an argument by snarking about grammar. Or, at least you think you can, because your friends laugh and snark along with you. The guy you're debating? He just knows that you're an asshole with no interest in having a discussion. So now nobody is discussing shit.

Confession: I misspell shit all the time on purpose. I mangle my phrasing, I use vernacular, I employ slang, I throw out every latter-day bonhomie I can find because you know what? The use of the word "mutherfucker" inoculates your statements against clumsy bullshit copyeditor "their/they're" canards. READ THAT CLOSELY - I deliberately mangle my language so pedants like you are forced to acknowledge my statements. By dumbing down my language and then throwing a few big words and clever alliteration in it, it's judged on a gentler scale than if I speak like I've got a Strunk&White up my ass.

That's your fault.

By not picking your battles until it fuckin' matters, you're making shit worse for everyone. I'm not the only one who does this. We've all adapted to it, whether we know it or not. Fuckin' grammar pedants are actively making the whole fucking world stupider because you force even the clever among us to pretend to be morons so we don't find our arguments drowned in emdash bullshit.

I got like a 780 SAT verbal and like 1540 on the GREs. I've written for a living. Those reports without typos that the lawyers try to tear apart? I've written them. And people like you have me starting my arguments with fucking memes.

Cut it the fuck out.