Years ago...
I made the mistake of joining MSN messenger (does that count? well, anyway) and talking to retarded Americans at 3am.

Why? I was on a downer at the time and getting seriously depressed and not having many friends of my own thought this would cheer me up along with the vast quantities of alcohol I was consuming.

How wrong I was. One guy insisted I should come over and marry him (I was training to be an engineer at the time so a Green Card wasn't a problem). All the girls were just really bitchy.

The reason I gave it up? Well apart from pulling myself together, I got fed up of people correcting me on my spelling when I typed words such as 'realise' and 'colour'.
Get stuffed. I don't whine on about 'gray' and how to pronounce 'paedophile' which I suspect half of them were.
( VandenPlas can't think of anything clever - no change there!, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 16:00, 7 replies)

Have a clickety click.
I once spoke to a girl who genuinely believed that American travellers taught the British how to speak English.
(GONEism, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 16:04, closed)

*applauds till my hands are raw and bloody*
YES! i HATE americans whO think they can contradict us over the CORRECT SPELLING OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE!
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 16:04, closed)

I had a "friendship" with a canadian girl
who insisted that "they may not have the Euro in Devon, but they definitely have it in the rest of the UK"
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 16:10, closed)

Realise...
Hmmm... if you're being strict about it, the "-ize" is more authentically the traditional British spelling; "-ise" was initially an Americanism.

Or so I read recently. Can't remember where, though.
( Enzyme is powered by sunlight, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 16:20, closed)

-ise
is a recent (well, last few hundred years) French infiltration into English, as far as I'm aware.
(JohabMorelli is spenging merrily away, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 18:00, closed)

@Enzyme and JohabMorelli
Yes, I have heard something about that, to do with how it was derived from the Greek - or something long those lines.
It's not so much about, 'I'm British, and therefore I'm right', it's more about 'It's an alternative spelling you morons'.
But we invented the language so there ^_^
( VandenPlas can't think of anything clever - no change there!, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 18:03, closed)

Bill Bryson
Read "Mother Tongue". It's a really witty look at spelling in the English Language and tells you where many words originated.
It pains me to say it, but many Americal spellings are the originals, that haven't changed from when we went over, and it's us that have evolved. It's the same with customs such as Haloween which was very big when we were populating the colonies.
Having said that, Webster did butcher their spellings to 'color' and 'tonite', so neither side is really correct.
(Kliper Filllets Getting noticed by twats on the internet since, Fri 12 Sep 2008, 12:16, closed)