A huge pet peeve of mine is when someone takes up an interest, especially one that effects them long term, but doesn't bother to research or use correct terminology. My biggest pet peeve is pretty obvious with my title - people calling their stretched ears and jewelry by the wrong names. I know people are only human, which is why I don't get mad if someone who doesn't have stretched ears does it. But when someone does it, I enlighten them, and then they blow me off - oh that bothers me. So here's a lesson.
When you stretch your ears you are stretching your goddamn ears. You are not gauging them. Gauge is a size of measure that is commonly used when buying plugs so you can get the right size. But even then a lot of places only use millimeters to describe how large the jewelry is and plus once you get up past 00g it goes into inches (or still millimeters.) Gauge is commonly used when buying wire or pipes.
Gauge can be used as a verb but not to describe stretching your ears. It can be used to gauge a persons interest for example. But that has nothing to do with physically stretching something. Nothing!
In fact, if that were the case I should go around and say that I inch my ears. That sounds dumb though, doesn't it? Well that's how people sound when they constantly say gauge.
Also, the jewelry people with stretched holes wear is not called "gauges." There are several different types of jewelry but the main one people say is plugs. There are also tunnels, spirals, tapers, ear weights, etc. Each one is unique and of course they all look and feel different.
I have heard that gauging sounds nicer than stretching. My reaction? You're an idiot. It doesn't. Just stop. I don't go around saying I inched my ears and my inches are so awesome. Why? It sounds dumb, it's wrong, and people would laugh at me. I think from now on though I'm going to when people tell me all about their gauged ears just to show them how dumb they look. I know some people appreciate the knowledge and take it to heart, I have nothing against that at all - that's awesome. But others refuse to learn and it's frustrating. Don't take up something you aren't going to learn about.
There has to be others that have this pet peeve as well. A look on some websites show that there are some awesome people who only use the right terms. Well, good! You people are AWESOME.
It's just annoying. Please use the right terminology when you take up an interest. Please.
