When I say anyone can Twitter, I don't just mean anyone can have an account or anyone can do it if they really try. I mean anyone can absolutely take over Twitterdom.
Case in point: Ashton Kutcher, aka aplusk. I'm not happy he's using my initials to further his twittermania, but the dude was the quickest to amass 2 million followers.
Yeah, A+K is the reigning king of Twitter. He's no longer Kelso from That '70s Show, The New Bruce Willis, or the dude from Punk'd. Ashton is Mr. Twitter.
So if you don't think you can make Twitter work for you, take a good hard look at who can.
I'm a self-professed word addict, but I'm not a language snob. I don't really like Grammar Nazis. I don't bemoan the demise of the English language. I just want to make it clear from the outset that this rant is not, I repeat, not (at the risk of creating a double negative . . . I mean, the second not was for emphasis, not to negate the previous not . . . I didn't say I wasn't a nerd) grammatically or linguistically motivated.
I do love language, I just don't believe in lording it over people. I love it when people use words well to communicate ideas not just clearly but also beautifully. When people can't communicate, that's okay. There's plenty of other cool stuff to do. So, once again, this isn't a rant in defense of language.
This is a rant in defense of laughter. I haven't decided yet, but I just may love laughter more than language. I love the sound of genuine, good-natured laughter. Haughty laughter (which should kind of rhyme, but doesn't at all) is irritating. Derisive laughter, not so fun. And some people's laughs are just plain wrong, though it's no fault of their own. But when people laugh for all the right reasons, laughter is my favorite sound in the universe.
But in text speak, it's just LOL. Or LMAO. Or ROFL. Or ROFLMAO. Normally, I love abbreviations. But LOL just doesn't cut it. LOL isn't funny. Laughter is supposed to be contagious, but LOL is a virtual laughter vaccine. What's more, the paranoid side of me (all of me) has serious doubts about just how OL the L really is. It's the texting equivalent of just telling someone, "That was funny." Cue the video:
When I see LOL, no matter how much I trust the person who typed it, I usually suspect them of lying. I think, Oh . . . they didn't really think that was funny. They just saw that I was trying to be funny and patronizingly LOL'd me to make me feel better. Well guess what . . . IT DIDN'T WORK! And that's just not healthy.
The sad thing is, I don't know a remedy. Typing in "Ha ha" doesn't really work. "Hee hee" sounds . . . not manly. Expounding on how hard you're laughing sometimes works. (My friend Heather usually informs me when an IM or email forces her to involuntarily spray her beverage on her computer screen . . . I really like that one, but it can be expensive.) And no acknowledgment of the humor is even worse. Total silence just lets the joke-teller's mind wander to all kinds of bad places. Youcrossedthelineville. Youreanidiot City. Ihavenoideawhatyourtalkingaburg. I hate those places.
I guess we could all just YouTube videos of ourselves laughing at various degrees of hilarity. You could tape the, "I'll humor you with a subdued chuckle" laugh. The "I don't get it, but I'm laughing anyway" laugh. The "seriously, if I typed LOL, I wouldn't be lying," laugh. The delayed, "Okay, I'm laughing, but just kind of . . . still figuring it out . . . oh, NOW I get it, that's hilarious and I can't stop laughing," laugh. And of course the "Someone call a doctor, I'm having an aneurysm and my abdomen's imploding," laugh. I'm sure there are others, but those would do okay.
Still, I guess there's just no substitute for actually being with people and laughing in their company. Kind of the down side of freelance writing from home, eh? Of course, my favorite audience of laughers is almost always here, and they're a very easy crowd to please. :) (Oh, yeah, smiling via text is completely ok with me.)
If you have any better ideas for LOL alternatives, please let me know. I'm dying here.
Who would have thought that a Scientology video would remind me of something I love to do? Well, it did. For some odd reason, I find strange satisfaction in coming up with abbreviations for phrases that would never be used frequently enough to actually require abbreviations. Here are some of my favorites (and most of them come from work):
SCO. So-Called Office. My office mate and I have shared the same workspace for nine years. It's always been the kind of office where people congregate. People come to see me. People come to see Elena. People come to see both of us. People come to see the people who come to see either of us. If your eyes didn't tell you otherwise, you'd swear there was no door. No one knocks. No one does a fake "knock knock." And we like it that way. But there was one particular day when there were five people (other than the two of us) in our office, and none of them were talking to either of us. At that moment, I looked at Elena and said, "This isn't an office. People call it an office, but it's not an office." And there it became, the SCO.
HWOPIN. Hand-Written On a Post-It Note. This one is pronounced as a single word (HWO-pin). It just became easier than saying, "Yeah, just make note of it on a post-it." Now it's just, "Put it on a HWOPIN." See how much easier that is?
S of a B. This one's self-explanatory. Not the nicest, but it sounds super nice in a dorky way when you abbreviate it.
UA. Unnecessary abbreviation. I don't really use this one. It kind of seems frivolous to double up. Giving the abbreviation process its own abbreviation feels like bureaucracy.
When I say anyone can Twitter, I don't just mean anyone can have an account or anyone can do it if they really try. I mean anyone can absolutely take over Twitterdom.
