An Open Letter to Today’s Social Networking Kings & Queens

Dear Social Networking King(s)/Queen(s),

Tongue planted firmly in cheek; mode = ON

First and foremost, let me apologize to you for writing this letter in a language that is probably difficult for you to read and understand. I prefer constructing sentences with complete words and punctuation, and I do realize that such verbose forms of communication may appear pointless to extremely busy and noble people like you. However, it is my humble request that you stay with me as I attempt to share my thoughts through my archaic and abysmally boring language.

Tongue planted firmly in cheek; mode = OFF

Confused and perplexed; mode = ON

As I surf through countless tweets and Facebook conversations, I am often baffled by this new language that you have invented. A language that some of my old-fashioned friends and I struggle to understand the point of. For example, why do you insist on saying, ‘c u l8r’, instead of “see you later”? Is the time saved on a few key presses really critical to your daily schedule of doing whatever it is that you do? Or is it your way of projecting a cool dude/dudette image of yourself into the virtual world? Shortening long words and phrases is understandable, acronyms are also fine, but what is this obsession with making short words even shorter? Sometimes, it’s not even shorter … but just, different! Case in point: ‘kewl’ versus “cool”.

And you don’t stop there. You would rather use ‘n’ instead of “and". For you the three articles in the English language are ‘a, an, d’ instead of “a, an, the”. For you ‘sumthin hapnd cuz of sum1’ instead of “something happened because of someone “. You stay up ‘l8 in d nite’ instead of staying up “late in the night”. You want to have a ‘gud lyf’ and that’s great, but I just wish that you rather had a “good life”. And what’s with you when you ‘suppalyk’ your friend’s FB comments? Is the like button not enough to show your appreciation if you don’t have any other words to contribute? Also, it doesn’t bug me when you LOL, but kindly explain what the hell is ‘lollzzzzz’? Did you fall asleep with laughing out loud?

Confused and perplexed; mode = OFF

Annoyed and irritated; mode = ON

I hate it when you say that things were ‘gr8r b4’. Remember, it’s “never” and not ‘neva’. We are “friends” and not ‘frens’. It’s “whatever” and not ‘wateva’. It’s “with” and not ‘wid’. It’s “right” and not ‘rite’. It’s “what” and not ‘wat’. It’s “today” and not ‘2day’. It’s “phone” and not ‘fone’. D lyst is far frm cmplet, i cud go on foreva …

Here’s a tip to avoid looking like a complete moron: make the extra effort to type the last ‘g’ when you feel like ‘singin wen itz rainin’, or when you use the –ing form of any word.

Annoyed and irritated; mode = OFF

Polite request; mode = ON

PLEASE DON’T TYPE IN CAPS ALL THE TIME. Please use punctuation where you can especially in a long sentence because it increases the readability of the sentence like this one and to make my point I am going to try to make this sentence even longer by saying some unrelated things that nobody cares about see you have started getting weirded out and I did this just to make you realize how disgusting it is to read such poorly constructed language. Please understand that special symbols such as the question mark (?), exclamation mark (!), period (.). etc., don’t need to be repeated a billion times to stress its importance. Do you understand ???????????? I hope you do!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Also, please realize that the period is not a substitute for the space bar. It’s perfectly alright to write a sentence like this and ……………..you……………don’t………………need…..to……..write…………like……….this.

Polite request; mode = OFF

Trying to be nice so that you don’t feel bad; mode = ON

Nobody has to be grammatically and syntactically correct all the time while tweeting, facebooking, or IMing. We all use shorthand at times. Things like brb, tc, ttyl, etc. are perfectly acceptable. The problem is when you take it too far with words like ‘wurdz’. The occasional usage of such ludicrous language is also fine, but when you insist on talking in gangsta rap format al da tym – it can get really unbearable for some of us. No, you don’t save any significant amount of time when you talk like this. Neither do you come across as cool.

Trying to be nice so that you don’t feel bad; mode = OFF

Parting words and final shot; mode = ON

Some of you may argue that why make a fuss when what you want to communicate gets communicated anyway, even with your moronic language. Fair point, but I beg to differ. There’s one heck of a difference in what you are asking me to do when you say ‘cum onlyn’ instead of “come online”.

If you want to discuss this further, feel free to write to me at: rotfl@hahaissomuchbetter.com

Parting words and final shot; mode = OFF

Yours sincerely,

Troubled Social Network User