D TRUBLEZ WIT TXTING

Now that the majority of our society seems to be firmly rooted in the online world, our collective consciousness is free to connect and interact, creating a never before seen, all powerful global network of...

Stupid.

Today Seth MacFarlane (yes, the creator of Family Guy; yes I follow celebrities on twitter, fuck-off) tweeted “Tweeters, if you need a resolution for 2011, how ‘bout we work on getting the whole “your/you’re” thing down?” which helped inspire this topic. There is an entire generation of people who are beginning to think the way they communicate online is acceptable for other real world applications such as school papers, etc. I’ve gotten notes at work that I’ve almost had to use Urban Dictionary to translate.

I’m sure when the Internet was first getting it’s legs with BBS’s and the like people thought how eventually the power of worldwide shared knowledge could be. Then came AOL and instant messaging, and websites like Geocities or Angelfire where one could create their very own web page with backgrounds consisting of rotating burning skulls, and the most hideous color combinations known to man. We realized that the concept of Deus Ex Machina, the god in the machine, was more like a retard getting crunched in the cogs.

Today, through the use of cell phones and services like Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, and others it is possible to be connected like never before, and yet we can - with this collective power  - no longer spell the word “the.”

Back in the days of BBS’s and Telnet services we used to play around in chat rooms and such with permutations of letters and numbers, giving way eventually to things like “l33t,” “haxxor,” and of course, the eponymous “LOL.” Some of them were useful and stuck around. “LOL,” while not meaning the person is actually laughing out loud, is better sometimes than typing “Ha ha ha” to indicate laughter as it could lead to problems: did I put enough “ha”’s? Too few? Did I properly indicate the level of funny I thought the joke met? 

It’s enough for me to not give a shit, so generally I personally use “Haha” when something is funny and “LOL” when something does make me actually laugh out loud; however, I accept people who use “LOL” for both. 

It didn’t stop there. Once more and more people joined the global network, the power of our digital linguistics was wrenched from us like the virginity of an altar boy. No longer were the nerds and geeks of the world - the creators, the pioneers - in control, the power of digital language was now in the hands of the masses, and like all power, eventually it was abused.

Now, everywhere you look you have to question whether the word “teh” is really a typo or some asshat that has decided to rape the English language. Things like “C U L8R” appear in text messages and while I admire the intelligence it took to realize “C” sounds like “see” could you really not take the extra 2 button presses to type the full goddamn word? Also, by the philosophy used early in the sentence the last word should sound like “ell-ate-are.”

Not only can people not spell anymore, but they can’t capitalize or use punctuation. In a few years time, we’ll have to translate everyone’s own digital language as it will most likely be considered discrimination if we don’t, and we will fail to address exactly what it really is - the effects of global stupidity.

C U L8r!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!:)!!!!!!!

Goddammit.