I love and heart you, internet

Originally Posted May 18th, 2006. This is one of my favorite, infamously exhausting rants on the eroding standards of the world.

I used to take the time to correct my spelling in IM, even sometimes carefully taking the time to insert "commas" (haha, remember those wastes of space?), apostraphes in contractions (I'm lovin' it!), and using a painful assortment of words to describe difficult moments in my life instead of using the emoticon with the X through its mouth (yeah, that one). I used to even DESCRIBE to people where I was going, giving them a reasonable time-frame of expected return, and then informing them when I was returning with an affixed apology in postscript.

Wait, hold on a sec...BRB. Ok, I'm B.

HAHA!!! What a n00b I was.

But the real question is, with the encroaching dumbening down of language: what is life going to be like, etymologically, linguistically, culturally, etc... 10 years from now?

Here's a GLIMPSE INTO THE FUTURE FROM A FAKE TIME TRAVELLER WHO DIDN'T HAVE ANYTHING BETTER TO DO THAN BLOG HIS EXPERIENCES RATHER THAN BET ON THE SUPERBOWL AND THE TRIPLE CROWN!!!!

I should probably try to make SOME money to make payments on my DeLorean, though

10 years from now communication is solely going to based on Napolean Dynamite quotes, extremely long acronyms (IWOTAMPMRNWAPP: I'm waiting outside the AM/PM right now with a pizza pocket), and the phrase "oh, just read about it in my blog". All other forms of communication, especially amongst the exiled "literati" (the non-philistines who read "outside of the blogosphere"), will be punishable via reintegration into the sub-comminicae by being forced to read a 14 year old girl's myspace "likes and dislikes" page until their eyelids attempt to fully devour your eyeballs.

Saying phrases like "I appreciate Rousseau, but I think his earlier works were a tad defeatist", "Wasn't Jesus really Black?" and "I actually read the preface AND the epilogue!" will all be punishable by death. All foreign films with subtitles shall be banned, for people do not wish to "read" when they go to the movie theaters. In fact, movie theaters will no longer be allowed to display any words, including on the marquee, advertising, and confusing movie times, for they remind patrons of books too much. All books will be adaptations of existing movies, and even then, they will always be far worse than their cinematic counterparts so no one will buy them.

Your summer-reading assignment

"Ulysses", "Gravity's Rainbow", and "The Old Man and the Sea" will all be downloadable in text messaging format, with the main characters thoughts and feelings expressed with an animated cartoon owl in place of rich and descriptive prose. By this time, text messaging will be so obsolete that barely anyone will do this, thus leading libraries to replace physical tomes with text message transcripts. People will still read the inside liners to write their book reports.

Unfortunately, book reports will be banned several months later because they drive down standardized test scores too much. Speaking of standardized test scores, thankfully they will have not left ANY CHILD BEHIND...except the poor kids, the minorities, the males in writing and reading comprehension, the females in mathamatics and science (okay, far fewer than in that category than the males in the other category), and the teachers' inner children. But thankfully, well-endowed, predominantly-white schools and their children will not be left behind...they will be WELL-COMPENSATED for keeping ahead of the pack while having started 3-laps ahead.

They will all be given complimentary text-messaged copies of the book "Superfudge" by Judy Bloom.


TO BE CONTINUED>>>>>>