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Location: The land of the free and the home of the brave
Distribution: Slack 10
Posts: 239
Rep:
We need to start a war against AIM
How many of you are sick of "omg ttyl brb roflrofl rofl lmao omg hax0rz111!!!! jUsTyNe iS SO HOT OMGZ1!!!" and other expressions. We need to stop this nonsense and learn to speak normally. We are talking about the downfall of Western Civilization. That is why I appoint myself to be the official forum guard against AIM speak. One lol or omg is okay, but no more than one or else... Thank you.
I am in two minds as to whether I agree with your sentiments entirely or not. I do find that I cringe when I see people that do know English well writing as if they had been taught the language by a crazy chimp - I saw a lot of examples of this during my few (very long) months training to be a teacher. However, I also find that sometimes it can be just as effective to use a few well placed abbreviations or contractions when their general meaning is very well understood. One that caused me some confusion when I first encountered it a long time ago was LOL. Why on Earth were so many complete strangers saying "Lots of Love" to eachother.
I would, however, not include the concept of emoticons or smileys as over-AIMing (for want of a better way to phrase this). Smileys and other emoticons can be extremely useful for demonstrating sarcasm. Personally I prefer to use a slightly more geeky method by enlosing statements in html/xml tags such as <irony></irony>, etc.
I also prefer to type £0.02 instead of "Just my two penneth worth"
Hmm, I don't know.... I think we need to work on people's spelling for regular words. Once we tackle that problem, then we can work onto the abbreviations, possibly. I find abbreviations useful, but like you noted above, the "online" lingo is becoming pathetic. When you see people writing notes in class (mind you, to other class mates,) and they're using LOL and the such, it is depressing. I'm more in favor of the i.e. (id est -- translation: which means, not in example, which is e.g.) and the like. Properness (yes, it is, in fact, a word,) is one of the ideas that keeps linguistics from going back to our ancestors' means of communication.
Of couse, not everyone, like me, has a copy of Random House Webster's College Dictionary on their computer, with a nice launcher on the taskbar for eazy and convenient access. Now if I could only port the program over to Linux, so I wouldn't have to be online to use a dictionary on my Linux box....
Followup:
The references you've listed above are completely inadequate. People have already tracked down the oldest smiley face online to take place in 1982. Now, I know that the source comes from a microsoft website, but I remember reading something similar on the BBC. You also have to take note that in 1982, internet users were most likely Apple users.
if we stop using 'netspeak altogether, do we also force capitalization and completely proper grammar on everyone? correct spelling? not to politicize the issue of course. i assert that, like most things, moderation is key. i have no beef with a simple "LOL" instead of "I am laughing aloud!" or "brb" vs. "I will return momentarily." however, LMAOROFLLOLOLOLOLOL is far too much. and who the hell came up with hax0r anyway?
of course, it's true that this stuff was around pre-AIM (anyone remember IRC? ever use a BBS?). however, gaim takes some steps in the right direction, including the "/me" action function (like mIRC has had for some time).
All that short speak was rampant in IRC. But clearly people over do it and appear to do that proudly! Very pathetic! hax0r was I believe first used in a lame attempt to discuss hacking on-line without being detected by... ummm something I always thought the /me function in IRC a tad useless.
a lto of bad aspelling is do to the keybords in sure, theese fucking qwerty keyboards suck, i never used anyothers but they promise comforatable more natuaral typing, only problem is that they cost like $50 (serisouly, that the chepest dvorak kewbord iv seen for a pc), , now on to the fall of western civilazation, WHAT CIVILAZATIONNN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! jeezz we were far better offf killing eachother and sacking the romans (damn rome ), but seriously, people were far more advanced a long time ago, these days its not that were more civilized, its only that if war broke out wed kill eachother sence everyone in the westrn world should know how a nuclear bomb works, and should be able to build one given the right parts, i mean comon!, all thats requires it plutonium 236 or uramiun 235 at like what was the required amount? a baseball size? so dont giv us that western civilation falling crap cuse its been falling longer then you would remember, longer then the last death of the neadrothul (acuaal that would be around were we are now )
Your too late. IM speak is a recognized alternate language here. You can take a class for college credit just like you can for Spanish, French, or sign language.
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