Social network, acronym language.

I have joined Facebook last year. Soon after, this conversation followed:

                   17 y.o daughter: OMG, FB is so yesterday!

                   Me: What is today then?

                   17 y.o daugher: TWITTER, oldie.

Then I tried a twitter thing to keep up with a trend and gave up. Reasons were:

1. Too many messages, takes too much time.

2. A half of the time, I don’t understand what other person’s talking about.

3. The most of the day, I would be attached to my Blackberry which is outragiously expensive. I rather buy a software than having an expensive gadget. In Australia, for the price of NOKIA’ or Blackberry’s latest model you could buy a decent laptop.

4. What is the point following people, who use the technology to do own PR?

When I open my YM in the mornings, offlines like: ”Someone is TERMINALLY ill, needs $, please forward to your friends on the list” or ”If you DON’T forward it within next two hours to at least FIVE people, something BAD is going to happen to YOU”. Or my favourite: UM MANY bla bla bla, if you REPEAT it 25 TIMES, you are going to live till 100 y.o.  For your record: I don’t know Tibetan and have never learned it.

Many Flinders’ School of Education lecturers have been involved in a longitudinal research project Kids Matter. The research findings suggest cyber bullying has an increasing effect on childrens wellbeing.  (Refer to http://caef.flinders.edu.au/kidsmatter/p/index.html for more details). Dr. Larry Owen, a world class educational psychologist, argues that a downstream of development and technology is mental health as wide exposure to information exhausts fragile minds. 

Cyber language is another story.  I read somewhere a New York school girl’s essay about her summer vacation. It consisted of 160 characters! and used abbreviation wildly. My daughter sends me texts that KGB officers would envy.  How about ”OMG, what a CWOT, it made me LOL”? Longman, Oxford, Webster dictionaries togehter won’t help you here to decode it.

Social researcher, Mark McCrindle said while only a few years ago there was a distinct difference between the type of language used in emails and online chat and that coming out of the mouths of teenagers, the two now blurred together. He argues reasons for it are firstly, youth have always used language as a code, a way to exclude others, and it’s even more like that now. Secondly, technology has influence on how we express ourselves in writing. It’s simply easier to write things in a shorter way and now that’s spreading to the way we speak  (The Advertiser, 2010, p.36). Apparently, it is not only youngsters but also adults are not immune from the trend. LOL and BTW are the most used acronyms for common people.  Terms like LOL were used to illustrate the tone of a message; something meant to be a joke or taken light-heartedly.

My favourite Sex and the City is known for SATC. Some, such as the Global Financial Crisis, or GFC, and GST-goods and services tax-are commonly used.

Following codes come from ”Speaking in Riddles or the Voice of a New Generation” by McCrindle.

CWOT- Complete waste of time (Freighting?)

LOL-Laugh out loudly

IRL-In real life

TTYL-Talk to you later

OJ-Only joking

ROFL-Roll on floor laughing

BRB-Be right back

BTW-By the way

ATM-At the moment (banking?)

ETA-Estimated time of arrival (airline websites?)

IDC-I don’t care

POS-Parents over shoulder

TGIF-Thank God it’s Friday

FWIW-For what it’s worth

GFETE-Grinning from ear to ear

FCOL-For crying out loud

LTM-Laugh to myself

MYOB-Mind your own business (There is accounting software for that)

OMG-Oh my God

PS: TQ for Yr att’, I’m off 2 Xmas BBQ.

😉 Alimaa