Don't Wanna Stutter More

As a campus journalist, an Accounting major, a novice debater, and simply a human being, I came to realize that expression is the most lucrative and greatest asset that we ever used.
It does not matter what media we use, nor is it a care if we say it with numbers, symbols, ciphers, codes, words, calligraphy, ad infinitum.

However, I realized that as we delve into this technological era as chat, text messaging, e-mail and social sites, our gift (and freedom, per se) of speech is slipping its way through our fingers and we are getting away from its REAL purpose. In fact, with it, I think we are becoming weirder.


Case in point:

[A text message thread between BF and GF]
BF: Hi, babe.
GF: Hi 2. (Wrong grammar!)
BF: Musta ang day?
GF: Fine nmn. U?
BF: Fine dn.
GF: IC. Lab u. (nahiya pa... “lab” eh?)
BF: Too. (huh?)
GF: Ingat.
BF: Too. (uli?)
GF: Tnx.
BF: Tnx too. (wrong grammar again!)
GF: K.

(The next day…)
BF: Hi, babe.
GF: Hi 2. (Wrong grammar uli!)
BF: Musta ang day?
GF: Fine nmn. U?

You tell me now what is next…


It is short. Futile. Stupid. And it goes again and again, day by day.

I don’t want to be a hypocrite, though I admit that I have been to a conversation like this (but it’s not that bad.) I also text other people when I miss them with messages like “Hi. What’s up?” (Street-like). Or, Hi, anu gawa mu? (‘u’ nalang ba lahat?) and some of them blast off while the rest go with my dim-witted strategy.

My teacher in Theology 101 at Saint Louis University said that interaction is more important than actions. It is straight, WYSIWYG, and it does not misled other people with their disparate interpretations. It is our Biblical proportion as social beings.

How I miss the days in my grade school years where I always stay late in school to chat with friends and we do not have to be worried about “extra load” (for contra-sim providers) and low batt. We are happy, and the next day, we do it again. It is not short, of course. But it is never futile. Never stupid.

It goes with our way as children of the technological era. We have them all (YM, e-mail, FS, FB, Multiply) but these should not get in our way of being comprehensible and intelligent speakers.

I do hope that the world may change its media but it should not change out ways. With this, it is not too late to develop into weird aliens of weird language.

Not short. Not futile. Not stupid.

PEACE!


[sept8,'09]