I remember a guy, he once wrote that a certain girl from a certain manga, if she turned real, could seduce any man in the real world. Any man. They would all be powerless to resist her and simply had no chance against her. This made a lot of people very angry. Questions were asked: "What about married men, would they forget their love and break their commitment? What about gay men, would she convert them? Was this girl the cure for homosexuality? What about celibates by choice? What about Catholic priests? What about...?" The guy replied in a huff that when he said "all men in the world would" he of course meant "all men except those who wouldn't" and we were all stupid for not reading his mind and getting that. After several comparable gaffes, always blaming others for his mistakes, he was banned from the forum.
Write clearly. Reread before posting. Mind ambiguity. Remember implied is not the same as stated and context is not the same as text. Don't expect other people to intuit your meanings. Say exactly what you want to say, in no uncertain terms; no more, no less. And if you fail, accept your responsibility; don't throw the blame onto others.
. . . Wait, I'm sorry. That story started, and I earnestly thought it was an example of how absurdly pedantic people can be, but no, you're taking the side of the nitpicky literalist crowd?
When somebody says "They can have anyone they want" that never means literally anyone. There are always people who wouldn't be interested, because they're into someone else, they're not into their gender, they're ace, too old, too young, or they died in the 17th century, or whatever. "They can have anyone they want" is a common hyperbolic shorthand that refers to the fact that someone is attractive enough to have an abundance of options. It's an extremely common turn of phrase and this is the first time I have ever seen someone try to defend taking it literally.
If you genuinely thought it was literal, you had a very glaring gap in your linguistic knowledge. If you knew what they meant and were nitpicking the literal meaning of their phrase despite that, you were being intentionally dishonest.
Same thing with "like". "like" is very commonly used as an expression to refer to romantic interest. Words have more than one definition, (in fact, "like" has, like, several,) and you have to read the context of the situation to understand which usage applies.
In a romance comic, talking about a character who explicitly turned down another character's romantic confession, "She doesn't like her" is extremely obviously intended in the romantic context. I find it very difficult to believe anyone on this forum is unaware of the romantic connotation behind "like."
If you were unaware of the romantic sense of "like" then welcome to Dynasty, you must be very new. If you were aware of the romantic sense of like, and it did not occur to you that that might be how they meant it, that's just pretty poor reading comprehension. If you knew what they meant and are nitpicking anyway, that is intentionally dishonest.
Sorry to everyone else for the rant, I'm gonna drop this now, because it's mostly off topic at this point, but nah, man, people have a responsibility to try and make their language clear, but the reader ALSO has a responsibility to try and take what they said in context in good faith, to seek understanding, not pelt them with nitpicks. Language isn't a competitive sport, you don't get points for dishonestly picking apart somebody's phrasing.
