Monday, March 6, 2017

To love in times of the Internet

R we in luv with our txt msgs??

By CLAC - 2014

Years ago one could have said that the ultimate objective in life for human beings was to find an endless and lasting love. Boys and girls would pursue to find their significant ones to keep and to share forever, to pass on their ideas, feelings and history; sadly, those ideas are no more. Nowadays, “never-ending love” survives one or two months if lucky. And relationships as such are at distance and in written form; young people communicate and transmit their feelings, thoughts and beliefs through images or selfies and weird text messages which sometimes are as long as ten LETTERS!!! Is technology adding or taking away desire which is a vital element of romance? It has been said a lot about love through centuries; how to find it, cherish it and maintain it forever and ever.  Not so long ago, people would wait by their home phones for a call, nowadays they keep watching over the “last seen at” on WhatsApp, or wait for that “ping” from their loved ones or at least an emoji to indicate that their message was received.
Once you get a phone, the object of your affection is only a second away from communication, but the question there is does that make romance bloom or wither away like roses that are so representative of love around the world.

I think it takes away and gives something more,” says author Milan Vohra, India’s first M&B writer. “Longing can be built through connectivity because a text message or a WhatsApp message can help build up the romance, until the couple meets. And if one of them is busy, they can simply communicate that and keep the chemistry going by, say putting up a link to a song or an indirect status message that the other knows is meant for him or her.”
Even physical contact has a new nature with the so-called sexting; couples believe it is okay to share intimate pictures of themselves through the cell phone. And once they are leaked to the public they cannot believe it!
I wonder what my grandma would have said if she were alive about this situation. Would she have stayed with grandpa for so long? Would she have sent selfies and updated her FB account? Or would she have accepted to even use a cell phone?
Every day, everywhere, at all times people are checking whether they have received a WhatsApp, a Selfie, a Poke, or a Tweet. It´s insane! One can notice somebody has received a txt msg or call because they even flinch and their body language changes. They are constantly aware of the phone and its notifications. If they are having a conversation of some kind and they get a cell notification, they phub (ignore a person or one's surroundings in a social situation by busying oneself with a phone or other mobile device) their interlocutor and stop paying attention to the conversation. 

E-mail used to be very popular at the beginning; however, nowadays it is mainly used to communicate in formal contexts like workplaces and offices; the new generation doesn´t like to write much and when they do, they will use shortcuts and abbreviations which mean nothing for older people! Things like…

“RUOK? Want 2 go 2 cinema L8R? BTW Z´s coming. TMB B4 U leave home?”. = 49 letters

Translation:
Are you Okay? Do you want to go to the cinema later? By the way, Z is coming. Text me back before you leave home. = 89 letters
Txt msg
Meaning
C U L8R M8    
See you later mate
B4
Before
AFAIK
As far as I know
W8 4 ME, I´M L8, SOZ
Wait for me, I’m late, sorry
KIT
Keep in touch
RUOK?
Are you okay?
LUWAMH
Love you with all my heart
HAND
Have a nice day
Zzzzzzzzz
Boring!
KOTL
Kiss on the lips
TMB
Text me back

It is very common, nowadays, to use text messaging as a form of communication in many different situations: to ask somebody out on a first date, to finish a relationship, to wish a friend a happy birthday, to say sorry to a friend for a mistake you made, to ask for advice, for a teacher to tell you the homework, for a teacher to give you your grades or arrange a meeting, for schools to keep in touch with parents, to arrange a doctor´s appointment, to renew books at the library, to book videos at the video store, and so on…
Emoticons and emojis are another way to send text messages. Emoticons are little pictures made out of punctuation marks. Here are some examples:
  • :-) = happy face                                           :-( = sad face
  • ;-D = winking grin                                        @--^--- = a rose
Emojis are forms of animated emoticons for smart phones:

💓👉👀👄😘💏🙉🙊

These things have also evolved, they are now animated and colorful with sound and music which drive older people crazy!

So just to check if you are “in onda” try and decipher this txt msg:
-CUL8R, LtsGt2gthr, 4EVRYRS –

Till next time! ;)