Life in the twenty-first century has brought with it its own language. We should be making things easier, but I find it all kind of complicated...
Friend - This should be a relatively simple term. I mean, someone is either your friend or not, right? Wrong. Now, there are friends on Facebook and actual friends. The term must be clarified in conversation (although I wonder why people don't just stick to the one type of friend (you know, actual friends), rather than Facebook friends that are what - fake friends? Enemies? Strangers?).
Follower - A follower of your blog or twitter account, which is quite straightforward. Except that speaking of your 'followers' makes you sound like the leader of some bizarre cult or something.
Emoticons - Why are so many people winking at me all of a sudden? No one ever used to wink unless they had dirt in one eyeball.
LOL - Laugh out loud. Although many of the things people 'LOL' at aren't actually worth a loud laugh. And I recently overheard a conversation - yes, an actual verbal conversation - between a couple of teenagers and when one said something vaguely amusing, the other said "Lol!" I wondered why she didn't actually laugh out loud, rather than say she found it funny enough to laugh at loudly?
As for nouns and verbs - Do I blog, or do I have a blog? Is it a tweet, or am I tweeting? Do I click onto Google or am I Googling?
And so many acronyms: LOLZ, FTW, FFS, LMAO, ROFL, IRL, BTW...
OMG it's all so confusing.
Is there any online language that confuses you?
Megan
I must admit that I hate lol and all it's forms. Yes I am a lol snob.
ReplyDeleteHaving a 9 and 11 year old really does help though, and scarily I have heard the daughter & friends using them in their conversations...
As for friends, I have just stuck to just saying my friend, mind you, the dead silence when some people realise by friend I mean someone I may not have actually met IRL, OMG, I can hear them mutter FFS under their breath. ;)
hahahaha, I really did LOL at this post ;-) And what's wrong with the wink?! I love the wink. I make a point of only having 'real' friends as Facebook friends (not aquaintances, or friends of friends etc) - if someone's not really in my life, then they're not going to gain access to it via computer.
ReplyDeleteI lurked around one of those mummy forums a bit just after Popps was born a few years ago, I could barely understand what they were all saying with the DH, DP, DG, MIL, AF, etc going on.
ReplyDeletePopps (age 4) recently did a drawing and wrote " Dad is a sop sin, i m larfin"
Translated to 'Dad is a stop sign, I am laughing' I was thinking that some teenage texters would possibly actually write like that.
Thanks for the laugh, Megan! I'm a tad obsessed with emoticons - I love them! I'm not really a very expressive person IRL (sorry, can't resist those acronyms!) but I find that I can be online with emoticons and I love it!
ReplyDeleteRe the LOL thing, I take laugh out loud to just be laughing to be heard rather than laughing loudly. IYKWIM? ;)
I don't like all the acronyms and often have to look them up! it's an ignorance thing on my part so it just makes me feel silly. I think you make an interesting point on the friends thing. I think the line is more blurred these days and I'm sure I know some of my bloggy friends, like you, almost better than I know some of my in-laws!
ReplyDeleteIt's all so confusing isn't it!! I use the LOL sometimes but I genuinely have to have snorted, guffawed or almost choked on my breakfast to write it down. An actual laugh out loud, if you will.
ReplyDeleteFriendship definitely seems more blurred these days. That's not such a bad thing, connections are always good. I just wonder if the next generation will ever experience the same level of actual friendship that we did. Everything seems much more superficial these days. There are so many people to share things with!! x
On The Hills (obsessed, I know) one of the girls used "Oh, LOL" in her conversation and I thought that hilarious! A LOL moment, you might say. ;)
ReplyDeleteOops. Sorry. Dirt in my eye.