The Slippery Slope of the Emoticon

I'm not a big fan of the Transformers but I think I can grasp the basic concept. Some stupid machines somehow start to think for themselves and rise up and wreak havoc. Seems implausible and just the stuff that summer blockbusters are made of. (It's too early in the morning for me to get started on Megan Fox and her bizarre desire to emulate Angelina "The Devil" Jolie...that is another post for another day. And don't worry. I could write a book about my feelings for Angelina).
But yeah, a car turns into a robot and now it wants to kill people or something. Normally I don't pay attention or care about storylines like this, but lately something has given me pause. What the HELL is with these emoticons?

I understand that texting and AIM completely changed the way that my generation speaks. I will also be the first to admit that I am a huge abuser of the system. I speak in "text slang" almost exclusively. I have always loved acronyms (my nickname is just my initials for crying out loud) and I loveloveLOVE being able to punctuate a sentence with a "BRB" (be right back) or "OMG!" (oh my God).

I first started to grasp that the text slang was a problem when my best friend Beth came to visit me and began saying, "OMGWTFBBQ!" (Oh my God, What the Fuck, ....) what did the last part mean? Beth calmly explained that BBQ had not changed it's meaning and still meant barbeque.
So this meant that people were actually going around saying, "Oh my God! What the Fuck?! Barbeque!!!" It's ludicrous and ridiculous and really made me start to think.

I did some research on the web and realized that some "OT's" (old-timers) probably have no idea what we young people are blabbing about when we speak in our choppy, new made up language. There are a myriad of websites to help the OT's with their difficulties.
www.noslang.com
www.web-friend.com/help/lingo/chatslang.html
www.netlingo.com/acronyms
....and the list obviously goes on.

So since we have obviously mastered abbreviating our words, I assume it was logical that the next step would be abbreviating our feelings and emotions. Enter the Emoticon.

Now, I like a good smiley face just as much as anyone. Sometimes a :( can say a lot in a text to a friend who is going through a rough time. I can handle the wink ;) but that is the limit for me. Yesterday my friend Ben was showing me all of his new emoticons, and I got riled up! He was showing me a mustache emoticon, a "more cowbell" emoticon, a crab emoticon, a ROBOT (???) emoticon, and a pile of shit emoticon. WHAT??? A PILE OF SHIT? HOW IS THAT EQUIVALENT TO A SMILE??

The entire point of the emoticon is to express an emotion that you would not be able to convey over electronic communication. If you are in front of the person you can SEE that they are smiling, or frowning or winking. An emoticon is an emotion that you have to show via text, because the person on the other end of the phone or the computer cannot see you! If my friend ever asked me how I was doing and I felt like a piece of shit, I would not bring said friend into the bathroom with me and show her a pile of shit. I would not perform the act of taking a shit, nor would I have left a shit in the toliet so that I could really illustrate how shitty I felt.

The pile of shit emoticon (in case you are wondering it is ~@~) brings this new text slang to new heights. Previously I was really annoyed by ROTFLMAO because I couldn't figure out what the hell it meant. (The beauty of an acronym is usually it's simplicity). Well ROTFLMAO means Rolling On The Floor Laughing My Ass Off. The last time I was on the floor laughing my ass off I wasn't shouting out random acronyms... I was rolling on the floor laughing my ass off.

As previously stated, I love a good acronym. A good one. These ten letter acronyms that don't mean anything or these emoticons that symbolize fecal matter are too much for me. And I'm not saying that if you type ~@~ that a pile of shit is going to come to life, squirt out of your computer and destroy the planet; but you never know.