Friday, March 17, 2006

Laughing what off?

A year ago, I railed against LOL and ROTFLMAO. I am pleased to report that there's another convert to the crusade: The Assimilated Negro does not like ROTFLMAO. At all.

You know what's unfortunate? That those cheesy abbreviations and even cheesier emoticons sometimes offer the most expedient way of conveying certain feelings in writing. We need new fonts. Like the Ironic font, so dimwitted readers won't misunderstand. (I somehow doubt that TAN is truly riled up by rampant deployment of ROTFLMAO. The people who think the term actually makes him mad could have benefited from the Ironic font.) The Amused font, so that you can simply reply to something without explicitly expressing your amusement—the font will tell the reader that you may have laughed aloud or may have been silently amused; the location of any laughter (floor or elsewhere) and the status of one's ass (on or off) need not be spelled out.

Something must be done, really. I can only write Heh. so many times before I'm mistaken for a pale, estrogenic James Brown. Solutions, anyone?

10 comments:

Charlie said...

I agree that these chatty abbreviations are way overused. The problem is, it's a lot easier to write them than it is to actually write well enough for irony or amusement to come across. Still, I can only take so much "hehe" and "lol" before I want to puke.

Mignon said...

Half the time I've gotta google the damn thing. It took me forever to get IMH. I thought it was an Instant Message inside joke. I commented on MooAlex the other day and concluded with a ;) because I was teasing her and felt too lazy to say "I'm just teasing you" and her comment program turned it into a little yellow face with a winking eye. I felt myself getting enraged that my words had been unwittingly accompanied by a little yellow smiley face with a winking eye, then realized I deserved it. I won't make that mistake again.

Agent 31 said...

I'm a big fan of inserting an emotion or action into asterisks. For example...

*standing to show example*

I can listen to a good joke and have a short chuckle afterwards, like this...

*chuckling*

...or I even use a noun in an abstract sense to convey an emotion. As if you couldn't already figure that out.

*sarcasm*

Mona Buonanotte said...

I'm a big fan of 3-letter gutteral utterances.

Gah.
Feh.
Grr.
Mmm.

It's like I'm Cro-Magnon woman, and I like that 'cause it means I'm probably naked.

Orange said...

Charlie, what the hell do you think they mean by "hehe"? Is that a giggly "hee hee," or a creepy "heh heh heh"? "He" is a pronoun, not an interjection.

Mignon, how about when you have a number 8 followed by a parenthesis, as in "(my kid just turned 8)" or in a numbered list, and Blogger converts it to a bespectacled emoticon?

Maine, *nodding in agreement*.

Mona, I have been going the "Gah." and "Feh." and "Meh." and "Grr." route myself. I don't even know what "gah" means, exactly, but fuck it. It's got the right vibe.

Bumop!

Charlie said...

Welcome back. I can finally get to Orange Tangerine for the first time in two days.

I'm sorry to see that Blogger made you delete whatever you had posted that was making them label your site as Forbidden. I'm sure it was hot!

LazyLazyMe said...

How about we assume that all I write is sardonic unless otherwise indicated.

Fucking smiley faces.

Dharma said...

I try to limit those abbreviations and the weird spellings that have blossomed most unfortunately, like "kewl". Yeah that takes so much less effort to type. *typed very sarcastically*. I won't bother to discuss the impact this usage will have on spelling bees. They will have to come up with a new catagory - most creative speller to win along side of the most arcane speller.

Tertia said...

omg, U R gr8. lmao!!!!! i lIk U. letz b fRnds. c U l8r. bi

:-) :-)

((((hugs))))




whats the abbreviation for asshole? I need that one.

Orange said...

How about 0*0

or, for a big one,

O#O

Interpret this: ((((((0*0)))))))