The Joy of Text

I'm all for communicating by email. I've even come to tolerate messages sent on Facebook. Skype and Facetime don't seem to bother me either. I don't love Twitter, but I do enjoy some of the "tweets." And I must admit, I still have a nostalgic liking for smoke signals and carrier pigeons.

But I have to draw the line when it comes to our laziest form of communication.

Texting.I

It's not the smiley faces or the LOL's that drive me nuts. It's everything else.

First, any acronym should be expunged immediately. Cute shortcuts like OTL and TTYL are like the Cliffs Notes of the human language. Say what you mean. Sometimes, someone throws one at you that you've never seen before. Then you have to keep guessing until it has some semblance of meaning. At the end, you're exhausted and realize that this episode could have been avoided if one of you would have just picked up the phone.

Next up on the list is the use of the letter "U" and the letter "R". As in the infamous, "How R U?" Geez. How lazy is this crap? Have we gotten to the point where we don't even have time to spell out three letter words? Pretty soon we'll be able to shorten everything and bring back morse code.

And it gets worse.

Some people deem it necessary to confirm plans with a single letter. "K." So let's put this into perspective. Our lives are now moving so fast that we don't even have time to spell out 2-letter words. This decision sits at a level that lies somewhere between ennui and illiteracy. I always wondered what the shortened version of not confirming plans woudl be. "NO K?"

We can't even thank people correctly. Instead, we have to show off our creativity and attempt to express our gratitude in as many different ways as possible. When we thank someone, we can say "Thnx" or "Thks." When we don't like something it "sux." If we really like something, we say it "roks." For some reason, we just can't bring ourselves to add the letter "C."

This brings us to the King, the reigning champion, the crown jewel of texting laziness. It's referred to as "Colon P." It almost sounds dirty or like some test you have to take by leaving a sample in a cup and leaving it on the sink. In reality, the "Colon P" is a symbolic way of showing your displeasure.

:P

To truly decifer its meaning, you're required to turn your head 90 degrees to the left. When you do, you'll see an image of a face with a tongue sticking out. This is classy stuff. Somewhere in the future, the spaceships will land. The aliens will emerge and see our used Blackberrys and think that we must have been a very intelligent species.

Of course, if they came to this conclusion, we'd have to check their intelligence.

Hopefully this made you LOL, or at the the very least, gave you a :)