Of Age, Language, and the Net

Saying things like "Age is finally catching up to me" would be terribly unbecoming at this point in my life.

At my age, I can't say that I've seen much of the world. And yet, no thanks to the media, we probably have seen and heard quite a lot - including those that we'd rather not know of (useless stock of data, anyone?). But because the Net allows me to focus on _what_ I'd rather dive into, and because my span of interest may not even cover my front lawn (i.e., not too much?), I can safely say that there remains a huge part of the world today and yesterday that I am oblivious to.

I've been meaning to check up on the Iranian election issues, but the bloodshed and violence rather deterred me. The local news provide nothing but absurdities that they're not even funny anymore. Influenza A(H1N1) continues to be one of the main headlines, that maybe dengue fever is no longer receiving the attention it deserves (competition!?). MJ's sudden departure and the accompanying loss to the world/music industry/insert-random-person's-life-here. And a bunch of other stuff...

On a more personal level, I've been frequenting a page that I used to visit around 4, 5 years ago. Sharing a common interest, I joined a community to fulfill my daily doses of my interests...and generally speaking, my stay is very rewarding. But upon reading the posts...well, some things send me frowning.

Before, it was simple smileys (now upgraded to be called "emoticons") that only required tilting one's head in an appropriate angle to make sense of what the writer wanted to convey. Over time it grew, to include huge smile with varying eye expressions (ranging from ":D" to "XD" and to the more extreme "XDDDDD" and the Japanese's "wwwww"). Then the eyes could get bigger ("8D") and...well, a bunch of other symbols followed...

There's the deliberate misspelling (an English teacher's nightmare?). "The" effortlessly becomes "teh", "owned" becomes "pwned". Not forgetting a handful of Internet terms that may rival Latin: phrases like "for the win", "leet", "trollz"...and the list goes on.

But the problem lies in the abbreviations.

The typical "LOL", "IMO", "BRB" and "OMG" were easy to begin with. Then four-lettered abbreviations like "TYVM", "IMAO", "ROFL"...and at the same time, three-lettered continued to grow. Notwithstanding, five and more also appeared faster than you can say "ZOMGpwnage!!! IDKWTHbtAFAIKTMIOHNOES!!!".

...Cough.

The above were not too bad because there could be references like this one somewhere in the corner of the Net. Imagine my surprise when I came across things that my brain could never recognise much less regard as logical in any sense of the word, such as "sfhjgsasj", "dkjfg", "DKJSLJF", "fna;dsfknsdf;;nfds!"...

...My first interpretation of such string of letters is that the writer, amidst her/his uber-excitement, lost control over her/his fingers and continued to type something that is not internationally known/identified as English...
That, or something fell and rolled over the keyboard.

Sigh.

Maybe I _am_ getting too old for the Net. I don't understand what the younger generation says anymore. Communication failure, ka?

TBC in a different title, most likely. Because I still need to properly understand what "kink meme" actually means, although I _suppose_ I already got the general idea of what "meme" is supposed to be...

Current Music: Itoshiki Nozomu - Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei OST

P/s: God, I need to re-study my Photoshop. What good is there when [ADVERTISEMENT] I've finished a comic strip for ][ impetus ][ but I can't get the dialogue bubbles to work properly? Still, I'll try to get it to work and post the thingy by Friday before the story runs stale, despite my preoccupation with some other stuff...Tsk. [/ADVERTISEMENT]