Here’s a text message conversation between myself and a friend that took place over the course of an hour. See if you can follow along.
Me: How was your day?
Friend: spend tym at beach + friends. HBU?
Me: HBU?
Friend: How bout you
Me: I was at work all day. Can you talk
Friend: kind of busy. Just txt me.
Me: I was at work selling a watch that uses kinetic energy from the earths rotation instead of a battery or solar power. So the only way this watch could stop working is if the earth stops rotating. The customer asked me if he could return it if the earth stops rotating.
Friend: ROTFLMAO
Me: What?
Friend: RTM
Me: WTF
Friend: read the manual
Words can’t describe how irritating it is to decode these dumb acronyms. How was I supposed to know that ROTFLMAO meant “rolling on the floor laughing my a** off ” or RTM “read the manual.”
Even after figuring out what this all meant, I didn’t know if she referring to the customer reading the manual or she was telling me to read the unofficial manual to this convoluted way of communicating. As if wasn’t bad enough trying to figure out the tone of the message, now I have to decode made up acronyms.
In some cases, texting is just plain lazy. Why are you too busy to make a brief phone call but can send 20 text messages in a half hour? By the time I’ve texted back my response in a respectable format, I could have called you and told you three times.
According to CBS News, in 2006, Americans sent and received on average 65 text messages per month. The number of messages sent and received in 2009 increased by 450 percent.
Communicating through text messages is terrible. The keyboard is too small, the auto-correct has a mind of its own and my need to properly punctuate adds a level of irritation I cannot describe. At this point I’m just giving up on proper texting.
Lets embrace the LOLs (laugh out loud) of the text world even if I know damn well that 90 percent of the time you’re not laughing out loud. It’s more like a chuckle or a half a** smile.
I’ve had people that text me LMAO (laugh my a** off) while sitting in the same room during class or something important like that and they didn’t even smile. It should be L.I.T. for laughing in thought.
I’m not saying I don’t text, I do. I just don’t have time use context clues to figure these long acronyms. Context clues, is that even possible? If this how people avoid being judged for misspelled words its working.
According to Marketing Charts, Smartphone owners between the age of 18 and 24 send and receive an average of almost 4,000 text messages a month.
The cell phone companies ruined it for me when they went unlimited. Now people expect to get a quick response when they text. Seriously, if you want a quick response, call!
According to NBC news, U.S. cellphone users should be able to send text messages to 911 as soon as 2013, and nearly everyone will by 2014, the Federal Communications Commission has announced.
This makes sense. Now we don’t have to be on hold. Just send a text the emergency hotline S.O.S. when you’re in distress. I wonder if a J.K. will help when you text 911 on accident. Maybe by then they’ll come out with their own acronyms and codes that will get you out of trouble.
This going to be great. Now the 911 operator can pull out the manual and figure it out too. When they put people on hold they’ll send a courtesy text message saying I’m busy just text me your location.
Caller: *$ IDK my 20 ICn A 187 4rm my POV. Translation: (Starbucks) (I don’t know) (my location)(I seen a murder)(from)(my point of view.)
Operator: Plz SB (please stand by). … Decoding message to avoid miscommunication.
Caller: WTF!!!
