RFK Jr. Swears He Wasn’t Thirsty for Fitness Influencer on TikTok

The reply happened in Sept. 2022 on Tyler Idol’s account, which she now has pinned to her page, and was unearthed by some right-wing dork on X Wednesday. The reply is now deleted, but according to saved recordings, it simply stated “Wow” and was accompanied by two smiling faces with hearts emoji. As for how you can tell it was from RFK Jr.’s TikTok account, it’s pretty obvious as the avatar is of the anti-vaxxer, and clicking on it took you to the official TikTok page for his campaign.

“Do people really think I was TikToking in 2022,” his post says. “This comment now appears on my account because the account was previously owned by one of the campaign’s young social media managers.”

I've always found it weird how Americans mandate putting punctuation inside quotes at all times.

It does appear that he has a point as the first video on his TikTok account was uploaded in May 2023, which was a month after he officially declared he was running for office. That was back when he was calling himself a Democrat, only to pivot to running as an independent candidate last October, and then to consider going for the libertarian ticket earlier this week. Mind you, former President Donald Trump’s camp did reach out at some point to discuss the anti-vaxxer as a VP pick. With such variable political leanings, maybe he should just run on the TikTok ticket.

intensely_human,

This is what’s called a “hit piece”. It is an example of “propaganda”, which falls under the broader category of “bullshit”.

Aatube,

I think the phrase you're looking for is "soft news", which does, in fact, have its place in society.

johannesvanderwhales,

The punctuation inside quotes thing is one of those rules where I know what the correct way of doing it is, but I intentionally do it wrong because I think more people do it the wrong way in practice. I guess it depends on context; I might do it the correct way in formal work correspondence.

FWIW my teachers in school always said it was a thing that came from typesetting. But I have no idea if that’s actually true.

Esqplorer,

I intentionally break that rule often, unless I’m writing a narrative or something for consumption by an audience of people senior to me.

Outside is much more logical.

intensely_human,

Whoever posted this put the thing about punctuation in there so we’d focus on that instead of the story.

johannesvanderwhales,

I mean honestly I could give two shits about what the antivaxxer does. There’s zero chance I vote for him anyway.

Aatube,

In the days of the printing press, it was not feasible to have type blocks for single punctuation marks. The blocks would be too small and fragile. Punctuation marks were appended to the end of the letter. Instead of having a single block with a period (.) they had a block for each letter of the alphabet with a period. (a.), (b.), etc. Making blocks for both (",) and (,") was an unnecessary expense, so they went with (,"), and the convention stuck.
—@TwentySeven

At least, it stuck in the USA.

acetanilide,

Interesting. I was taught that if the punctuation was in the quote, put it within the quotation marks. Otherwise I was to put it outside the marks. (American)

istanbullu,

Having reviewed the aforementioned account very carefully, I have come to the conclusion that Wow is the appropriate reply here.

luciferofastora,

deleted_by_author

    •
    Aatube,

    That is exactly what he said. Look at the second paragraph I quoted.

    luciferofastora,

    …I somehow didn’t process that. My brain kinda skipped ahead to the punctuation debate and then wanted to get back on topic.

    I shall go find a hole to crawl into.

    Aatube,

    Call me when you find a cozy one

    inclementimmigrant,

    I think in the end it doesn’t matter much. These are official social media accounts and the people running it are the public figure’s representative. Just shows that you have bad judgement and lack of disciplined staff.

    Reddfugee42,

    So we’re all just gonna talk like middle schoolers now huh

    gravitas_deficiency,

    Narrator:

    He was incredibly thirsty

    ivanafterall,
    ivanafterall avatar

    In the thumbnail, he looks downright dehydrated for booty.

    workerONE,

    Wow 🙂🙂❤️

    Aatube,

    😍😍

    elbarto777,

    I’ve always found it weird how Americans mandate putting punctuation inside quotes at all times.

    Wait, is it an American thing? I thought it was an English language thing.

    Edit: yup. English language thing. I do concede that it took me a while to get used to it, since in Spanish we don’t do that.

    Aatube, (edited )

    It's only prescribed in American English. By American I meant American English, not extending to Latinamerican Spanish lol. Nearly every other place in the world use logical quote-punctuation.

    Edit: I do not understand any of the downvotes on this thread. I understand these on my nonsensical late-night typesetters comment, but not any other one.

    elbarto777, (edited )

    “Logical quote punctuation”

    What does this even mean in the context of the whole world?

    How do the Chinese and Hindi speakers do it, since they’re the majority of people?

    Edit: actually, I looked it up. Today I learned.

    elbarto777,

    It may be (I don’t know…) because of the second sentence being redundant?

    I don’t know either, man.

    gravitas_deficiency,

    It’s actually a grammatical rule that I actively flout at every opportunity. It’s an imprecise convention.

    Aatube,

    This orthographical rule is mainly advised against in Britain and advised for in the United States.

    Revan343,

    It was at one point prescribed by most English style guides, be they American or British, but British style guides have been moving towards logical quoting

    Aatube,

    It's also prescribed by the SAT but not the British version, AFAIK

    Revan343,

    I’m not sure on those specifically, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

    The pressure in favour of logical quoting mostly stems (lol) from STEM, and particularly programming, where an errant period can be a serious problem. The pressure for traditional quoting mostly stems (not surprisingly) from older typsetters and established non-technical publications

    Aatube,

    Wikipedia also cites a bunch of sources that call one British and another American

    Revan343,

    Like I said, Britain has been moving towards logical quoting; their having the same (which wiki apparently calls ‘typesetting’) quoting style is mostly historical.

    Aatube, (edited )

    Sight misread there! :) It’s orthography, not typesetting; it’s just that as you also mentioned, the “American” style was historically used a lot by typesetters

    Edit: I misread.

    Revan343,

    In the wiki article, I was looking at the line

    These two styles are most commonly referred to as “American” and “British”, or sometimes “typesetters’ quotation” and “logical quotation”

    The former I know as ‘traditional quoting’, and the latter as ‘logical’. My terminology would be mostly coming from the Jargon File though, which is admittedly outdated; I believe it was last updated in 2003

    TwentySeven,

    Typesetting is actually correct. In the days of the printing press, it was not feasible to have type blocks for single punctuation marks. The blocks would be too small and fragile. Punctuation marks were appended to the end of the letter. Instead of having a single block with a period (.) they had a block for each letter of the alphabet with a period. (a.), (b.), etc.

    Making blocks for both (“,) and (,”) was an unnecessary expense, so they went with (,"), and the convention stuck.

    Revan343, (edited )

    Well fuckin’ thanks; I knew the old preference was a typesetting or typographical thing, it’s nice to know there was a physical typesetting reason for the preference, rather than just how it looks

    semperverus,
    @semperverus@lemmy.world avatar

    “Logical quoting” is such a backhanded statement.

    Revan343, (edited )

    I didn’t name it, but the name is more correctly descriptive than the other name that is used for the style, which is simply ‘new quoting’.

    Logical quoting has been slowly becoming more common since the advent of modern computing, which makes sense because there is significant difference between say ‘dd’. and ‘dd.’.

    thirdBreakfast,

    I’m on board with original punctuation going inside the quote, but then to be consistent, capitalization has to as well. So instead of “This comment…” it should be “this comment…” since in the original quote that was just a clause separated by a comma, not its own sentence.

    Aatube,

    I usually try to avoid that scenario and put the first character in brackets if I absolutely need to do that.

    Cornpop,

    Where else would the punctuation go except inside the quote? If you are quoting the end of a sentence then wouldn’t it make sense to have it there? Having the quote stop then just having a period floating in the abyss at the end would not only look stupid but defeat the point of the quote!

    Revan343,

    By some style guides, if you are ending your sentence with a quote but the quote is not the end of a sentence, your end-of-sentence period goes inside the quotation marks even though it is not part of the quote.

    Generally this style is called ‘traditional quotation’, while the verbatim style is called ‘new’ or ‘logical’ quotation. Traditional quotation was preferred for typesetting or prettiness reasons, but is going out of vogue because it is illogical.

    Aatube,

    But the punctuation isn't part of the original text, and putting the punctuation inside the quote marks loses information on the original text's punctuation. Periods do not need any puny comfort from two fucking lines.

    lewdian69, (edited )

    As an American I wholeheartedly agree. I HATED learning about that dumb rule and refuse to use it to this day. The punctuation, I would say more often than not, has nothing to do with the quote and should be outside the quotation mark.

    jqubed,
    @jqubed@lemmy.world avatar

    I mean we can change the rules, they’re not set in stone. Join me in placing punctuation that is not part of a quote outside the quotation marks!

    JustZ,

    Nah, looks sloppy I think.

    dvoraqs,

    You’ll get used to it, and then maybe you’ll realize how sloppy the other way is instead.

    SatansMaggotyCumFart,

    “Periods do not need any puny comfort from two fucking lines.”.

    Aatube,

    😱

    when you quote a complete sentence, and the sentence only consists of that sentence, you can just omit the period after the final quote mark

    SatansMaggotyCumFart,

    It looks better the way I do it.

    Aatube,

    Username checks out

    intensely_human,

    Why the fuck are we discussing nothing other than the punctuation question?

    Aatube,

    Cuz it's interesting? What the "fuck" else do we need to discuss about this actual event?

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