The Blogosphere needs its own vernacular
You know what I mean?
With the incredible advancements in technology in even the last 10 years, our rules and codes for written language have got to adapt and modernize. With the advent of blogs, instant messages, facebook, and twitter, we need more codes to adequately ‘voice’ what we want to say. These new forms of media don’t necessarily afford us with the time required to develop a character.
It is a lot easier when you are writing to fellow bloggers, whom you know at least have a brain. When you are attempting to write for the dreaded general public all bets are off. From what I’ve seen you can’t trust these people to get out of bed without a helmet. So you definitely can’t trust them to notice sarcasm or contempt. Even with an intelligent audience though, if we would invent a few new rules it would make all of our lives a lot easier!
This is especially true of the comment sections in blogs. If I type, “wat da fucks da matter witcho?” I have to pray readers will know I’m ‘speaking’ in a gumba Italian voice, and didn’t just have a seizure while typing. If I could just put GIV< /gumba Italian voice to follow/ (then sentence) there is no confusion! These are the abbreviations we are going to have to come up with and agree upon. We also need codes to convey such characters as ‘dumb hick’, ‘rich white republican’, ‘dirty hippy’, ‘happy gay guy’, ‘convict’, and on and on. The literary freedom this would afford would be phenomenal! “Yea”!
This would work especially well for writing through pop-culture ‘voices’ as well! If I wanted to leave a comment on a blog about obesity, and I said, “Haha, fat people are going to die!” you would think I was an asshole. If I could write PG(fg)= before the statement though, you would ‘hear’ Peter Griffin from ‘Family Guy’ making that statement. See, now it’s funny and completely absolves me of my reprehensible bigotry! (By the way, 99% of the time when I type “Yea” it’s in Peter’s voice.)
Most of us already take liberties with grammar. When a comma just isn’t enough, we might…wait for it…add periods. I want to take these expressions into a whole new realm. When we are speaking we can use facial expressions, our hands (I’m part Italian), voice inflection, and accents to convey our meaning. We have to come up with a way to do this on paper. If we could agree on codes to be used to imply sarcasm, contempt, pity, anger, resentment, bravado etc, etc…Imagine!
Maybe some of these rules would even be universally adopted by the public! This would help relationships everywhere. If you’ve ever had to have a heart to heart, or talk to an ex exclusively through email, then you know how valuable this would be. It can be very difficult to detect the slight subtleties of mood when it’s all on a computer screen. Say you’ve just broken up with the love of your life, and she has just moved on to your brother. After reading an email about her fabulous plans for the weekend, you send an IM back saying, “Wow, I hope you and Rick have fun at the lake this weekend!!!” When what you obviously really mean is, “I hope Rick drives your BMW into the fucking lake, then you both drown, then you get eaten by fish, then people from Baltimore catch the fish, then they go back home and cook the fish, then someone drops a nuclear bomb on the city of Baltimore, effectively wiping your DNA from the face of the earth!!!” You don’t want to write all that, besides things like that can be used against you in a court of law. So you would just type, SARC= “I hope you and Rick have fun….” See how that would painlessly clear up any confusion!
I know that I should become more intimately acquainted with the rules for grammar that we already have before making new ones, but this is for the greater good. So we all need to take some time out, work together and sort out the future of blogging in the 21st century! Together we can make a difference!
No Beth, I wasn’t talking about you! I know you’re with Rick. No I’m not still upset,…GOD!!
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