Topic: Damn You Newspeak

[frankcapri]

A little part of me died today.

I just got an email from my mom.  In said email, she used the acronym "LOL". 
This is the first time she has used this (or any emotive acronym) in an email to me.

She just recently started to use text messaging on her cell phone. 
Before, her emails were the picture of grammatical perfection 

[smokester]

Thankfully, my mother would rather pull out here own teeth than to write in newspeak or any other kind of slang.  She can only just about tolerate by broad London accent.

[Robin-Graves]

My mother never texts anyone,,she said its a waste ,if you want to use a phone,,call someone.
As for emails,,she barely knows how to turn a computer on.

[knownassociate]

...lol....well, ya know somebody had to say that.

There is truly something unnerving to hear one's parents use a colloquialism that is learned from their kids. Kind of on the same level as how they must have felt the first time we repeated a bad word they'd let slip.

[subvinorosa]

A new age has been born from the ashes of the old.

[Robin-Graves]

,,,And is that new age better than the first?

[smokester]

"New age", that made me laugh.  Half of London still speak in Cockney or Mockney and there is nothing novel about either...

[smokester]

I have never used a smiley, and never will - although I do have an issue with the number between 7) and 9) in lists.

I abhor text-speak, and leet-speak - I use commas, apostrophes and full-stops in text messages.

My kids would pass out if I ever wrote "2" when I meant to or too.

-- although I enjoy poking fun at text-speak, leet-speak and (most of all) Americanisms whenever I come across them.

I admit to being tempted to change to the opposite as a grandparent, just to psych the young 'uns.

I have mainly used PPC phones with qwerties or Nokia communicators for the last 10 years or so, and I write my texts as I would an email.  But to be fair, in the days when going over the SMS 160 character limit, meant your text would split and be sent in a mutitude of messages, that then had to be unscrambled by the person at the other end; I did abbreviate like it was going out of fashion.

[JackFrost]

I actually type out every word even on my shitty little cellphone keypad, and I've actually gotten responses where the other person says something like: "you typed all that?"

I've been reluctant to use 'Net acronyms because I like full words and sentences too much...

[frankcapri]

I started using smileys excessively when I started posting on forums. 
Originally I did it so people who didn't know me would know when I was
joking around or wasn't being serious.  It seemed like many times
people would misunderstand what I was saying without a smiley, and
I didn't want to make enemies over some stupid misunderstanding. 

It has since become a habit, but whenever I email messages to people I
avoid using smileys.  For some reason emails to me seem more "official".

I admit to being tempted to change to the opposite as a grandparent, just to psych the young 'uns.

There's something very entertaining thinking of you doing this.

Grandchild texts, "Pop Pop, what are we going to do today?"

Grand-dad Christ texts, "OMG IDK LOL!"

[ohcheap1]

I started using smileys excessively when I started posting on forums. 
Originally I did it so people who didn't know me would know when I was
joking around or wasn't being serious.  It seemed like many times
people would misunderstand what I was saying without a smiley, and
I didn't want to make enemies over some stupid misunderstanding. 

This is EXACTLY why I use them. I can even remember Brick not realizing I was kidding on certain posts and him commenting that I might try smilies.

There's something very entertaining thinking of you doing this.
Grandchild texts, "Pop Pop, what are we going to do today?"
Grand-dad Christ texts, "OMG IDK LOL!"

Hilarious image......Thanks Frank, that was a good laugh.

[knownassociate]

This is EXACTLY why I use them. I can even remember Brick not realizing I was kidding on certain posts and him commenting that I might try smilies.

Hilarious image......Thanks Frank, that was a good laugh.

Exactly, as OC said. It all started with a smiley to denote humor...then it became 2 smilies, one to display confusion, then three...before I knew it I could carry on conversations using my vast herds of smileys instead of words...jk, kinds of. And leet? Leet I use just to inspire awe in my young hooligan.

[dweez]

I tend to use the smiley's as most hear have mentioned...so that my vocal tone can be translated to the fora.

I also use whatever fake HTML tags I find appropriate, i.e., <sarcasm></sarcasm>, <fingerquotes></fingerquotes>, <facepalm></facepalm>, <venomous_duck></venomous_duck>.

[smokester]

I very occasionally use smilies, but only with the people that need the sentence enhancement.  The problem is that the absence of smilies can imply a "tone" of its own, and that is a sad day for the written word.

[dweez]

Yeah, often with the omission of smileys, people tend to take everything as serious and a personal offense...