Online communication certainly has its pros: you can communicate with different people from all over the world, re-ignite old flames from your youth and blog about the most inane things (hypocrisy is something I’m not averse to).
First, it was the email/sms (texting) revolution that got the ball rolling for online language. Then instant chat become the next champion, with social networking (read Facebook) being a gradual off shoot of that. The snow ball got rolling, and where it will stop, who knows?
The Queen’s English, on the other side of the proverbial urban dictionary (great website by the way), is something that is slowly being condensed by lolz, fyi, asap, number for letters (eg: gr8…what’s great about shite spelling?) and other abominable experiments on the English language.
Email, especially, has become the bastion of business and email speak. Puke. Whole companies have been created to maximise the use of email technology and email language. Again, someone hand me a barf bag.
There is nothing more ridiculous than someone updating their status on Facebook, without actually speaking any language whatsoever. There is that trick whereby if the correct letters are in the word and arranged in any other manner but the correct way, it is still legible. An example: I’m going to have a great weekend VS A gr8 wkend is on the kards etc (that was a shit example but you catch my drift).
Even with the introduction of e-books, and things such as the Amazon Kindle (my dad has one…I’m not plugging it), reading has gone even more online than it used to. with a button titled ‘Next Page’ replacing the minimal amount of effort it required an old-school book reader to turn a page.
While the Kindle firmly encompasses whole books, the fact that the presentation of the literature itself has gone electronic is a bit warped. I was raised, and I’m only 23, to enjoy a good book and while reading stuff on the Internet is cool, nothing helps a person’s language better than reading a lot.
The world is a bit different isn’t it? Even so, I still like picking a book whenever the need strikes me. No batteries required! Fuck yeah…
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