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Monday, April 1, 2013

Seriously Disturbed

I'm disturbed by something I learned this past weekend and I've just got to share.

An old friend of mine was in town - he has a super cool job out at Google and so he knows lots of things about the internet and technology and magic. As B Daddy, me, and my friend were driving to dinner together somehow the topic of emoticons came up.

I just jumped over to Wikipedia to make sure "emoticons" is actually the correct term and it is: according to Wikipedia, an emoticon is a pictorial representation of a facial expression using punctuation marks, numbers and letters, usually written to express a person's mood. 

We're talking about emoticons for some reason and he's all, so hey how do you make a smiley face when you text? 

And I, thinking this was some sort of lead up to a hysterical Googleian punchline, responded, uh with a colon then a parenthese*.  :)

And very casually he goes, oh - have you ever paid attention to how your high schoolers do it? (The high schoolers we work with at church...maybe we were talking about them before this came up...not totally sure.)

I'm all, what are you talking about? :(

He answers, pay attention next time. They probably do it like this. (:

So then I started thinking and looking back through texts and it's TRUE. The little whippersnappers do it backwards.

Reeling with incredulity, I was all, why? WHY? why do they do that?:((

He shrugged and nonchalantly replied, who knows. But it's more common among younger users now. 

I don't know if this disturbs you as much as it does me. To me this is a loud and clear signal that I am no longer a part of the trend setting generation. Things are changing and I'm no longer the one who's up on the latest changes. The old codgers are being left behind. And we're not even noticing. Pretty soon I won't be able to keep up and then I'll be just like my (not to be named) family members who are still trying to figure out the cut and paste functions on the computer. I don't know if I can handle it. I'm torn between being old enough not to care about not being cool and being young enough to desperately want to know what all the cool kids think is cool.

I'm curious if anyone else has had any similarly disturbing experiences lately. I'm still trying to wrap my mind around it.



*I just learned via the internet that the proper term for a single parentheses is a parenthesis. Mind is being blown all over the place today. 

5 comments:

  1. Mark your calendar-it's a red letter day when you realize you've crossed over. Just sneaks up on ya, huh? (:

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  2. I noticed, but I assumed the kids just didn't know any better and they were doing it wrong. Honestly, every time I see '(:' I see the 'smile' as a frown and it always takes me a minute to figure out they meant it as a smile. I think we're the ones doing it right ;)

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  3. I agree with Katy :)

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  4. forget those kids - we're still the trend-setters on this - we used/created emoticons before they were ever in the mix. be proud of your roots :D

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