With Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett's death yesterday I was reminded of 12 years ago when Mother Theresa and Princess Diana also died in the same day. News of Mother Theresa's death came in the morning and everyone was sad. Princess Diana was killed later that evening and the world went crazy. Suddenly everyone was like, "Yeah, Diana and somebody's mother died too."
Now, am I really, seriously drawing a comparison between Farrah Fawcett and Mother Theresa? And if I am, could that still be in any more poor taste than this headline from Tech Crunch: "The Web Collapses Under the Weight of Michael Jackson's Death." This is an article http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/25/the-web-collapses-under-the-weight-of-michael-jacksons-death/ that talks about how Twitter couldn't take the stampede of searches for information on Michael Jackson. They make it sound like the dude took one last look at his cell phone and said, "If I go I'm taking you with me!" and then died. And now, as if America wasn't already stressed out enough about the deaths of a former Playboy model and a singer who, to my knowledge, hasn't released any music in 20 years, Twitter has let us down. Dark times.
There's something about Twitter that repulses me. It could be the trendiness of it. I've always been repelled by anything way too popular, but this could also be because I've always longed to be popular myself and I'm projecting my own bitter feelings onto something that, God help it, just wants to overload me with information. I think it's also partly the name. "Twitter." It's, well, ridiculous. It sounds like the name of a pepped up squirrel in an ADHD freak out, leaping from tree to tree without pause. And, as I'm sure some comedian has already pointed out, it's got the word "twit" in it. So to turn that term for "stupid dude" into a verb, "twitter" should mean "to carry on like a stupid dude" or "to actively be a stupid dude." Which is ironic for an information resource.
"My," you're thinking at this point, "you're rather uppity for someone who has a blog. Miss Trendiness Sucks." And you would be right. You would be an asshole, but you would be right (I'm kidding - no seriously, I'm kidding. "Asshole" is a term of endearment. Ask my kids - no seriously, I'm kidding). But I'm going to ignore my own hipocrosy to poke fun at the term "lol." One of the comments on the "Web Collapses" article was this: "i did not lol this time." For an internet commentator, this is a grim statement. You know some shit is going down.
What's sad is how long it took me to figure out what "lol" meant. I used to look at it and try to pronounce it as if it were an actual word. "Loll?" I'd think. I could tell from the context that it meant the commentor thought something was funny, but beyond that I was stumped. Kind of like the first time I came across "omg." Five years ago, if you would have looked at the wall above my laptop you would have seen tacked-up slips of paper with web terms I had yet to figure out. "Omg," "imo," "bff," "Google."
Luckily for out of touch people like me there is an on-line internet slanguage dictionary. For the hell of it, I went to the "D" section http://www.noslang.com/dictionary/d and found a handful of terms that I'd always wondered about like "dah" which means "dumb as hell" and "d/w" which means "don't worry." But there are others that are, shall we say, revealing. "Dih" - "dick in hand." Hmm, what kind of chat could that be from? Or how about (and I am not making this up) "dnimb" - "dancing naked in my bra." Now, how often does that last one come up exactly? It confounds the nerd in my head. If she's dancing then how is she typing at the same time? And if she's weaing a bra then technically she's not naked. Most disturbing in the sex slanguage though is this one, "dilf" - "dad I'd like to fuck." Are there words to express my multi-level confusion? No. Keep in mind, this is just the "d's."
And now, if you have any questions about internet slang that eludes you, you may post them to the commentary. I'm curious. Did anyone else not know that "dafs" means "do a fucking search?" Twitter must have come up with that one, and then last night came up with a new one "psfsfrwfdh" - "please stop fucking searching, for real, we're fucking dying here."
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
For one, this: "And now, as if America wasn't already stressed out enough about the deaths of a former Playboy model and a singer who, to my knowledge, hasn't released any music in 20 years, Twitter has let us down. Dark times." is really friggin' funny. Srsly. 4rlz. I LOLed which means - oh, wait, you covered that.
Somewhat ironically, just at the moment I chose to peruse the PV, my local station (which I have playing online) piped in with Jackson's "Bad." This is kind of ironic in that the station doesn't normally play pop, but today they are occasionally in tribute, so it was interesting that the two events coincided. My life is full of such mysteries, and I'm glad that you could be part of them.
Tx4tgr - thanks for the good read.
I'm at this point assuming that you're dying to follow me on Twitter. Since you think it's so super awesome and only the most coolest people are on it and all. so here ya go!
https://twitter.com/melissabastian
:P
Tom- Have you been studying the internet slang page? Because this is good work!
Yeah, they've been playing Michael Jackson songs that I had comepletely forgotten about. "Bad" had slipped my mind but somehow Weird Al's "Fat" stayed with me, as if Weird Al hand't parodied the song, but had come up with that one totally on his own.
Mel - It's only a matter of time before I'm all into Twitter. Usually I make fun of something before I succumb to it (there are about a million sex jokes I could make at my own expense, but I'll press on like a good, repressed adult). Also, there's the super awesome part :)
I frequently make fun of things that I am actively partaking in, and twitter is a good example. It is pretty ridiculous the way some people use it. I'll admit that for the first couple of days I was posting about ten times a day. But now it's like once a day, if that.
Listen, I have 12 blogs. So, what, like it's some kind of news that I like to tell people my thoughts? :D
Post a Comment