It’s no small secret that I really hate it when people choose to take some “liberties” with how they choose to present themselves over the Internet/in text. Catch phrases like “lol”, “rolf”, and “lmao” never really caught on for me, but I generally don’t mind when friends use these over IM. It’s when people (usually on forums or once in a blue moon, someone on my IM lists) start “talking” with extra letters, unnecessary capitalizations, spelling with numbers, etc… that I really get my hate on.
A group of girls that I know have actually unwittingly patented a certain style of typing over IM or even in blog posts. It seems they have an infectious effect on each other (yeah that phrasing probably isn’t the best but whatever, for lack of a more suitable term I guess). Although there’s no solid way to define this flamboyant disregard for the conventional rules of spelling and punctuation, there are generally a couple–or, if you’re lucky, a tonne–of extra letters at the ends of words (like “thiss” or “thissss” or “thissssssssss…”) and the use of exactly two–but not three–periods at the end of sentences to denote what I can only assume to be a passage of time or pause lengthier than that signified by a single period, but not quite as lengthy as an all out ellipses (because pure chaos would break out if we were to use things like conventional forms of punctuation to denote things).
Then this begs the question, why oh why then do I like lolcats so much? I mean, if 12 year olds posing as adults while tYpin9 liEk di5 piss me off, shouldn’t the same apply for these syntactically challenged pussy cats (which will, for simplicity’s sake, be referred to as “pussies” henceforth)? It turns out that, in fact, pussies really are exempt from such constraints! Perhaps this proclivity and tendency of bias of mine for pussies has been ordained by nature, but in any case, the fact of the matter is that these kittehs and their horrendous spelling don’t bother me one bit. In fact, I share a lot of the mushier pussies with Amy and we has lols. I cannot place why this inconsistency between how I view dissleksick hoomans and kyoot kittehs exists, but it does.
Also, for the record, pussy cats are pretty damn awesome. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not one of those either “pussies or dogs” types. I am ashamed to admit that I actually like both. I mean, I wouldn’t mind having a dog when I get a loft later on, but as it stands I’ve got three pussies in my home and I wouldn’t trade playing with them for anything. You’d be surprised how fast they move given enough coaxing with a feather and a laser pointer.