AIM: Cromulent or not? (Part II)

AIM has many ruinous effects. I will say though, that on the whole, I use AIM extensively and am glad to have it.

I've had the same screen name since fifth grade: who wants to know what it comes from? That's right, everybody does. Well, here's the nerdy story behind it. I engaged in something called "simming" in the early days of AOL. In fact, I simmed in a Star Wars-based universe. Simming is where you come up with a character, and interact with other characters in a chat room via systems of expression like ::walks to door:: or ::swings force pike at X person's head::. Essentially, as a 14-year old, I ran the biggest arms dealing company in our little universe. I was a baller. My character's name was Zev, my favorite first name in the Star Wars universe, and Veers, after General Veers, the badass dude who commanded the Blizzard units in Empire Strikes Back (the walkers and such). Any "NERD!" calls are totally warranted, but just thought I'd Rook that out there as the origin of my screen name.

I know I have a diminished ability to talk and make sense, especially when I get excited about something. I attribute this to several factors, including my propensity for learning languages and thus having lousy enunciation. But mostly, I think it's because I think faster than I can talk. And I definitely try to overcome that at times by talking faster than a fucking New Yorker. Really just a bad idea because then the bad enunciation kicks in and I sound like a raging loon. But I see this is one negative side effect of AIM, at least for me.

Really what bothers me about AIM is the stupid little expressions that go along with it. "OMG" should be punishable by defenestration. Any derivation thereof (ex., zomgz or whatever) would incur nothing short of tarring and feathering. LoL is annoying, but it's so widespread, I give up. I will say I prefer "Haha" and derivations thereof when indicating laughter. It's much easier to gauge amusement. A short one is a chuckle, a long one with lots of caps is a hearty "I just saw a woman trip over her own high heels" laugh. The worst are "nething" for "anything," and "thanx" for "thanks." This is one of those things that makes me cry out that the English language is being destroyed. You're trading one extra keystroke for projecting the intelligence of a Labrador. One of the funnier exchanges I had in regards to this follows:

Cole: text me if they cancel co-ed. I’ll be driving
Me: Okay, will do.
Cole: thnx
Me: You know, “Thanks” is two extra keystrokes…
Cole: Thank you very much. I am deeply appreciative of your willingness to text me.
Cole: Ass-clown.

I deserved that, and he deserves extra wittiness points for his response.

Another thing about AIM that's not-so-cromulent is the potential for horrible misunderstanding. We all know there's so much about communication that's non-verbal. But even beyond that, intonation is a huge part of verbal communication. For example, I and a friend of mine got into a bit of a spat completely unncessarily, because both of us tend to use short responses as reactions to things. But "Hm." can mean a lot of different things in different contexts. Is it a snippy "Hrpmh..." with arms crossed and an eye roll or is it a "Hmmm..." as in, I didn't think of that before? You don't know. Obviously that's a burden on those conversing, but a burden that often goes uncarried, just because in our minds we take for granted that something will be understood a certain way, as if we were able to use body language and/or intonation. The point is, we often don't even realize we're failing to express ourselves completely.

In the end though, there's no way a "not cromulent" verdict could come out of this article, but there are some important consequences for our generation, having become so heavily reliant upon instant messaging as a means of communication. That said, I'm one of a single-digit number of people I know who even bothers with punctuation and capitalization in AIM conversations. Maybe that makes me a reactionary or just plain silly, but I really think we have to at least keep one foot in the realm of how the English language is supposed to look and sound. Probably just delaying the inevitable, though.