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Friday, April 21, 2006

Fighting words



I had a long discussion this morning with a co-worker about e-mail and how it is right up there with the telephone as a form of communication spawned in hell. I just think that e-mail has created this weapon of mass destruction for passive aggressive people to wreck havoc on the world.

Part of the problem is that it's human nature to try and get the last word. E-mail provides a forum where two stubborn people will die at their keyboard typing back responses in an effort to fire the last shot in an e-mail version of Battleship. Even if you write, "You Win," some people will type back one more e-mail saying "I know." This of course requires you to respond, "No you don't" and the whole thing starts up again.

E-mail, with all of its faults, is better than instant messaging, text messaging or chat rooms. I will go on record yet again that I despise the shorthand language that is evolving from these evil channelers of the devil. I was watching a program last night where a couple of teenagers were "texting" each other (I hate that they have made a verb out of it) with phrases like "I h8 my voiC" and "wen cnI Cu?" There is even an online translator for creating this cancer on the English language called Lingo2Word.

Well, I tnk txt msgN sux. To prove it, I translated a little Shakespeare for you:

2 B, or nt 2 B:
dats D Q:
Whether 'tis nobler n D mnd 2 suffA D slings n arrows of outrageous fortuN,
Or 2 taK arms against a sea of troubLs, n by opposing Nd em?
2 di: 2 zzz

That's just wrong (dats jst rong).

Language is an art. This lingo crap is graffiti.

Ironically, even the word blog came from this doublespeak: Web log. And even more ironic is that I know that many of the people who comment on this blog are going to torture me with the shorthand text lingo. But I will comfort myself in the knowledge that, As D ruler of dis blog, Ill alw av D lst wrd.

12 comments:

Naughti Biscotti said...

ROTFLMAO!!!

I hate the lingo as well. When I'm chatting with someone, I ask them what this or that means (brb, L8R, WTF, etc.) I even had to ask what "lol" was initially because I've always thought it was "lots of love".

Now, that I've gotten a bit arrogant with chat, I tell them to cut the lingo out alltogether. I prefer my language the old fashioned way: legible.

Time said...

Shandi arrogant with chat? I'm =)
I have to admit that I am pleased to find the lingo translator. I had to use it to translate ROTFLMAO. And all this time I thought it meant "rot on the floor maggot arm operator." You are right. Just using English seems a bit more direct. :)

morningstar said...

:)-

;)

so there !

morningstar

Time said...

Well morningstar, @ lEst ur on topic

Alex Pendragon said...

I'm so thankful the Navy taught me to type, because I'm fast enough to actually TYPE what I want to say rather than encoding it on the fly into another lanquage altogether which requires just as much work to translate as it would to have just said it in the first place. I used to create prose on the fly while chatting which would have been ruined if I'd turned it into abbreviations, much like what you did to the Bard.

Oh, and thanks for the nostalgia of rock-em-sockum robots.....I always wanted one as a kid and it never happened.

Time said...

Yes, THE Michael, that is yet another irony. People put as much energy in learning this new lingo as it would take to simply type it out in English. And you never really missed anything with Rock em Sock em Robots. The ones I had generally didn't work.

Hayden said...

someone has to disagree.

I am amused by/interested in the creativity of the new lingo - even got a good chuckle fr yr Shakespeare and wondered if it was really much unlike DiCaprio's Romeo. Kinda' jazz, more melody than knowing.

But you're right to blast it, because it's the current tribal youth language that sets itself apart fr adults. If you liked it, it would have failed its role.

Time said...

Hayden, please, you aren't calling me an adult, are you? I write about head cheese.

Hayden said...

gosh, my mistake, you're right. Can't be.

I just went into auto-mode 'cause it plunged me into old arguments abt slang with my parents.

nah, not connected. ;-) just a brain-linking error.

Time said...

Hayden, Your comment actually made me step back and think about my own youth and thinking my generation was really different. Unfortunately we rebelled with disco. Even we couldn't explain that. I also loved your line "Kinda' jazz, more melody than knowing." That was poetry.

Cherish, I think the lingo translator should be a saviour for you next time :)

darlingina said...

Tim... how DO you sleep at night. Better yet, do you actually sleep at night? Love it! ;o)
Hugs,
~gina~

Time said...

Gina, I sleep like a baby (which means I wake up crying quite a bit) :)