[fubu]

Off topic life advice: When you tell someone to stop doing something, don't start out with the word "Please". It doesn't really make any sense as it's a pleading word used as an order. It comes off passive aggressive and abrasive. Same thing with "I'd really appreciate it if" and "Would you mind". If it really is a simple request, then by all means, but when it's an order or a direct request, just say it without the weird prefix.

[DanBC]

The phrase "Please tell your employees to stop creating fake profiles on OkCupid and spamming our users." is standard English. There is nothing wrong with the please in that sentence. Your advice is weird and wrong. Please is just a word used to convey politeness and civility with a request.

[Joeboy]

As a native, English, English speaker, I don't see anything at all wrong with goodside's phrasing. I think they successfully expressed what they were trying to express, succinctly and with appropriate tone.

[tedks]

As a native English speaker I agree with the comment parent. "Please x" is just passive-aggressive. You see it a lot on hacker news because people want to be "civil" without actually being so.

[fubu]

Then I have a question.

> Tell your employees to stop creating fake profiles on OkCupid and spamming our users.

Seems to be what the poster really means.

>Please tell your employees to stop creating fake profiles on OkCupid and spamming our users.

That means the poster is begging the person stop? Does that really make sense? It sounds like someone is directly telling someone something, but is adding "Please" to get themselves off the hook for being seen as directly telling someone something.

As a native English speaker, I cannot remember anyone, except maybe an old person at dinner saying "Please pass the salt", say the world "Please" at the start of a phrase where it wasn't an aggressively postured order. Like this obviously was.

Serious question: Could you tell me what I'm missing with that?

[Hoozt]

On Topic death advice: when giving someone advice, don't start your sentence with "Off topic life advice", as you will drop 30% of your readers* when vision hit the "off topic" part.

*No scientific evidence behind this statement, but this is the internet, so it's true.

[fubu]

It's okay. If only one person reads it and stops the passive aggressive, office speak?, whatever that bizarre stuff is, I've done the rest of the normal sane people a favor. I'll take plenty downvotes to save just one person from having to listen to that weirdness even once.