Thursday, September 20, 2007

Dumming down the information age

My current job has certainly helped me feel a little more computer savy than I have previously felt. I can do things now that I never dreamed I'd learn to do a year and a half ago. But with so much new knowledge, comes a higher level of responsibility. I feel to warn all you out there (all 2 that read this) that are thinking of jumping on this information bandwagon. Deep down, something tells me that perhaps instead, I my intellectual level is moving in the opposite direction. I had this thought while simultaneously trying to instant message with a six month old baby, a decapitated head, a bag of sweedish fish, and what looks something like a miniature shark. No matter that they were, in return, IMing with a picture of snow white. How proud I was that I was able to keep each conversation straight (for the most part). Don't you love it when you accidentally IM your friend with, "Sweet!" when they told you their grandma died (Oops, I meant that for the sweedish fish who got 100% on a test)?

I'm claiming nothing new here, but sometimes I forget that there is a real person on the other end of that conversation. Sometimes I might forget to talk to them that way. Just because they don't answer right away doesn't mean they are shunning me. Maybe....just maybe they have other things to do besides be at my beck and call constantly. I guess this is why we save time by responding with "ROFL" instead of "that's funny" or "AYBABTU" instead of "all your base are belong to us". I kid you not....that's real.

Interestingly, I thought my sister and I rather randomly came up with "lawl" to replace "LOL". But, no....I don't think so. Unless we're more trend-setty than we know. I found it when looking up that wiki link above. (seriously, you need to do this: go here and look under "variations on the theme". Excuse me while I pause to bask in my new-found knowledge of how popular I am.... "But wait!" you say, "isn't this off wikipedia? The place where anyone can edit anything themselves on there? How do we know that you are not the one that put 'lawl' in the 'LOL' entry?" Hmmm...just trust me on this. I'm not that computer savy.