I don't think I've ever texted so much in my life.
According to Verizon, in the past month, I have sent and received about 1,000 texts each (I have unlimited in-network texting plus 500 extra so it's all good). That's about 10 times as many as usual, although I am a far cry from how many I'm sure 13-year-old girls send back and forth about how dreamy Justin Bieber is.*
* The dreamiest of the dreamiestes.
Not that I really mind, as it means people are actually interested in hearing from me, and smartly know I am not a talk-on-the-phone person, an irony not lost on me considering my journalism job requires me to constantly be on the phone.
True story: When I was in 8th or 9th grade and a girl would call my house, I'd be so against talking on the phone that I had my mom tell them I wasn't there.
Another true story: I was a loser.
But text messaging wasn't invented back then. That's right, kids. INVENTED. We had AOL Instant Messenger by the time I was in high school, and that was the cat's meow for a bit- we'd all spend hours doing epic conversations about nothing at all. If you were lucky, the person you were messaging with didn't use an obnoxious dark background/light font combination that I'm sure caused early onset cataracts.
With texting, there is instant gratification, and no one expects you to say much, because you only have so many characters. But I draw the line at texting about anything of gravitas. Or using the word "Gravitas" in a texting conversation, actually. And that's why even with my increased texting, I still won't have serious conversations that involve me twiddling my thumbs.
Far too many arguments have begun from texting because you can't figure out the tone. That's led to a gross overuse of LOL, haha and ;) to diffuse a comment.
Consider:
- I'm totally going to kill my mom lol :)
- I'm totally going to kill my mom
In the former, the texter is joking. In the latter, they provided Exhibit A for the prosecution. See? Another:
- U r such a dirty whore :) Im gonna screw ur bf to get back at u LOL
- U r such a dirty whore. Im gonna screw ur bf to get back at u.
In this, the first texter, who assuredly will screw her friend's bf because she's a slut like that, is just kinda joking. In the second, she is outlining the plot of "The Hills."
One last example:
- 2 hell w/ Team Jakob n Team Edward haha. What about Team Harry Potter? LOL!!!
- 2 hell w/ Team Jakob n Team Edward. What about Team Harry Potter?
Both texters are giant dorks and possibly pedophiles. Bad example.
Please provide your own examples. We need to expose this problem for what it is. LOL.
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