The mind-boggling stupidity documented in this, and the near-illiteracy of the messages left by the daughter's friends in this, make me weep for the future of our civilisation.
What the hell is wrong with us?
Current Location:Gilford, New Hampshire
Current Music:Devo :::: Greatest Hits (Mechanically Augmented) :::: (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (Booji Boy versi
there are posters in the mall, written in sms-text, that basically say "if you can read this, this applies to you... no loitering, no groups of 3 or more, don't wear black, no weird makeup, don't harrass the cash holders..." stuff like that. paraphrased. cuz i don't actually speak sms :)
Christiana Mall, off I95 in Delaware, has now taken to checking IDs. No one under 18 permitted in the mall on Friday and Saturday nights unless accompanied by an adult. As a former teenaged "maul rat", I'm kind of annoyed at this policy. :-(
Personally, I'm kinda horrified by the idea of any place so blighted that the only thing to do on Friday and Saturday nights is go hang out at the mall.
Before SMS we had d00d speak, my mocking term for l33t speak. Before that there was redacted netmail and ascii p0rn and before that redacted teletype messages and baudot encoded porn.
I always thought one of the funniest parts of d00dspeak was how much effort some of'em were obviously putting into it. Some if it was fairly inventive, true, but anything that takes two or three times as long as just using plain English is sort of inherently self-parodying.
In defense of SMS-speak, one of the issues they're working around is a 160-character limit. Also, texting using a telephone keypad is a pain. Heck, it's even a pain with the QWERTY keyboards on smartphones. I think I'd play loose with orthography in that situation too.
I think it's because you can do it reasonably discreetly without disturbing others or tipping nearby adults as to what's going on. Nearby adults, in particular, don't end up hearing half of the phone conversation, so it's also more private. It's also less synchronous than a phone conversation, so it demands less of either party's attention, and if you text someone, they don't have to answer you immediately.
And I say this as someone who grew up in a house where there was one landline telephone, and it hung on the wall in the kitchen, so whichever parent(s) were home got to hear my half of the phone conversation.
The TSA stupidity is magnificent, even for the federal bureaucracy. Another symptom of confusing motion with action. The inherent injustice in just having a list of citizens, for any purpose, is beyond my ability to be reasonable about. (I am thinking of the French list of gun owners that the Germans found so useful in WWII.)
All the electronic coding is just another form of cant. Various cants have been around since people have tried to communicate in public places without being understood. Every generation finds it's own ways of circumventing parental understanding. (Or local constabulary understanding.)
If thought of properly, any trade specific vocabulary can be thought of as a cant. I recently heard that math has become so specialized and compartmentalized that those who study sin(x) and Cos(x) can no longer understand each other's work.
Is the TSA article describing domestic U.S. flights? The reason I ask is that when I fly out of Toronto, the system described by the author to get around the no-fly rulse would fail at the gate. As you board the plane, you must present valid boarding pass and a photo id....which they then match against the list of booked passengers. Unless I had a fake id, (which is of course quite possible), I wouldn't get on the flight.
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*ahem*
"lol"
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k thx bye
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And I say this as someone who grew up in a house where there was one landline telephone, and it hung on the wall in the kitchen, so whichever parent(s) were home got to hear my half of the phone conversation.
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All the electronic coding is just another form of cant. Various cants have been around since people have tried to communicate in public places without being understood. Every generation finds it's own ways of circumventing parental understanding. (Or local constabulary understanding.)
If thought of properly, any trade specific vocabulary can be thought of as a cant. I recently heard that math has become so specialized and compartmentalized that those who study sin(x) and Cos(x) can no longer understand each other's work.
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