Footnotes

 

Footnotes are for morons and scumbags. Footnotes are for the intellectually and morally bankrupt. Footnotes are for literary failures. If you’re particularly dull-witted and slimy, and have nothing to say, use footnotes! A good rule of thumb is: The more the footnotes, the more the article or book isn’t worth reading. No writing of quality or value has a lot of footnotes.

Whenever a thinker or intellectual is incompetent and a loser, he quietly indicates this by using a lot of footnotes – by inventing a slew of phony references. He tries to hide his intellectual fatuity and depravity by directing us to a plethora of falsely erudite and recondite sources.

But smart and good people aren’t fooled. People of intelligence and virtue refuse to read such heavily footnoted vapidity and intellectual nonsense. Their time and life are too valuable to waste on such pleasure-destroying, soul-sapping drivel.

Footnotes suck the life out of every essay. They vitiate and ruin every piece they infect. They kill the thrill of intellectual discourse, and the fun of life.

These academic cancers drain the joy out of every fascinating and important intellectual debate. They render it lifeless, void, tedious, and moot. Nothing on earth is more boring than reading a footnote. Even vital issues of tremendous controversy are rendered lifeless and empty by footnotes.

As for people using quotations in their writing, yes, such things often help to illustrate a point. Yes, they frequently strengthen an argument by placing a powerful authority behind it. But these quotes don’t necessitate a footnote. Any truly important reference can be placed in the body of the text or, at worst, inside a brief parenthesis.

People of quality and brains who have something to say don’t use footnotes. Articles and books worth reading don’t have footnotes. So my message to everyone is: Stop boring us to death with your joyless and awful writing, you footnote-bloated morons and scumbags!