Bad "Text-ing"

One of my daughters stopped dating someone because they were a “bad text-er.” I had to have her explain to me what she meant. She said that the guy wrote texts in the abbreviations once used in middle school: for example: B4 as the word “before.” Apparently using texting word slang is no longer a socially acceptable thing to do---it is no longer cool. With the advent of smart phones and autocorrect/autotext it is passé to misspell words for the purpose of brevity.

 I had no idea.

There was a fashion trend a few years back: ponchos. I never wore them. I have never worn crocs either. By the time I contemplated their wear they were already out of style.

So too with ipods. I have always listened to the radio. And when I traveled my kids made me CDs for the car—it was always music they liked and thought was worth me listening to. And when my friends would discuss music libraries, downloading songs, and the perils of playlists, the conversation escaped me. And my friends would say I can’t believe you don’t have an ipod. And my response always was I don’t need one. And this was especially true when I discovered Pandora. If I put an artist’s name into the app on my phone, Pandora would choose songs it thought I might like---and damn it--it did a great job.

When my new iphone arrived the other day something occurred to me: ipods are dinosaurs. If you own an iphone, it also is an ipod. Sometimes if you wait long enough you can skip whole generations of technology---technology changes that fast. I felt pretty smug about it.

When I first started texting my kids made fun of the fact that I spelled out all the words. I just could not bring myself to use text-abbreviations. It seemed wrong to intentionally misspell words when I knew full well how to spell them correctly. I felt it would have dumbed me down. I also could not see the point in texting the number “2” for the word “to”—it was only a one character difference—how much time was I really saving by texting “2” instead of “to”?

So I am feeling quite smug again. I never used text-abbreviations so now I will not have to unuse them either. I skipped right over the fad. No one will ever accuse me of being a bad “text-er”. And in the process I maintained my self-respect—I did not commit a crime against my intelligence. I held out so long that the fashion fizzled out all on its own---just like ponchos and ipods.