Two posts in one day?

What can I say? Whoa.. I just rhymed and didn't even try. How smooth is that? I am waiting on a vendor to get here and I was reading my sister's blog and her post entitled "OMG...LMAO, and other internet codes that I don't know that mean that was really funny!"

This got me thinking about a post I was going to make one of these days.. so why not now? I am a computer guy, both by trade and for fun. I am a network engineer by day and computer gamer and MMO addict by night. I chat with family and friends on instant messengers and through email. I run our guild of 50+ people from all over the country, canada, and places in europe for fun and manage our guilds website with help from some very talented people.

As many of you know, all this internet communication has spawned a whole new language of sorts. LMAO for example stands for "laughing my ass off". OMG .. Oh My God/Gosh. You get the picture. Even emoticons can be an art form of sorts with the sideways smiles and most instant messengers now include little graphics for the emoticon codes like :D or :P

Now take that a step further and jump into an MMORPG or Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game if you prefer. An MMO is a game that supports thousands of users on one "server" meaning its a game with a massive chat room going on in and around it. Most of those chat channels are turned off for me. The general chats where anyone can say anything at any time. Sure, you are not supposed to swear or make any kind of racial, sexual or otherwise offensive comments, but only so much can be done. Thus it is far easier to just turn it off and ignore the multitude of idiots who apparently set out to prove what a waste of genetic material they are.

Guild chat however, I cannot really turn off, nor would I want to. The guild is a group of people that play with us and display our guild name over their heads in game. We help each other out, play together, have fun, even chat live on ventrilo, our voice chat server. We are like a family in many ways and I would honestly call most of the people friends. Many of them I have even met in person at one time or another in my travels or theirs. Another striking similarity to a extended family is the knowledge that you are going to have one or two people that annoy the living shit out of you. What makes someone that I have invited to be a part of our extended family fall into that category? Stuff like this:

"OMG gize! ne1 on tht can hlp me plz thiz dud ganked me n all i did wuz rotflmao @ him cuz his name iz stoopid. ne1? cmon gise."

The above quote is something that occasionaly will find its way into guild chat. There are so many many things wrong with that quote, but let me translate for the non-internet folks. What he said was:

"Oh my gosh guys! Would anyone be on that could come help me deal with this player that has killed me when I laughed at him because I though his name was comical. Anyone? Please guys?"

Now there are certain things I have just come to accept as far as those internet abbreviations and acronyms go. Things such as AFK, which stands for Away From Keyboard. Hypocritical? Maybe, but usually if you need to leave for a minute it is because something came up that needs attention right away, so typing AFK quite saves time and is pretty much universally understood. Some I have found seem to be somewhat unique .. meaning I have seen them used in other group situations and people respond with "huh?" Take "afk bio" for example. Shorthand for 'Away from keyboard, biological' where biological is used to mean you need to take care of some biological need, usually using the restroom. Odd term? Yes, but I would rather see that than have people typing 'Must go peepee' or 'Gotta go take the browns to the super bowl' .. too much information thanks, but in a raiding situation we need to know when people are not there so we are not counting on them to fill a crucial role on a boss fight only to find out they are in the restroom or on a phone call.

The things that really yank my chain are unneeded abbreviations. For example 'ne' for the word 'any'. Seriously.. it saves you one keystroke. ONE. In this day and age kids are learning touch typing and their way around a computer as early as 3rd grade. I know my son has a class called simply computers where they learn to type and learn the office suite applications and how to do research on the web. If by the time you are getting into an MMO you can't type fast enough that spelling out the word 'any' becomes a crippling hinderance, you need help.

The other real "OMG I WANT TO HIT YOU IN THE FACE WITH A SHOVEL" kind of stuff with me is spelling. Now we all typo stuff every now and then. Heck if you are a certain person that might be reading this (yes you K), you have probably winced at my writing style and found something I misspelled already, but I'm talking about words like:

gise = guys
one = on
b = be
jst = just

I often wonder if its just because they are young. We have kids of some of the adults in our guild that will play on occasion and if I know that they are like 8 or 10 even and playing to expect things like that. We have a dyslexic person in our guild that doesn't spell well at all and I have zero problem with it and try to be very sensitive about it. However, when a high school age or college age student comes on and types in that crap, it drives me insane. We have had many discussions with said individuals about this kind of nonsense and some just honestly don't seem to know any better or just don't care. I weep for the school systems that are turning out kids like this. I stop and think, would my kids spell like that? I have read a lot of their school stuff and while they will sometimes misspell words, there are certain things that even a 8 or 10 year old can do. Like know when to use "on" and when it should be "one". Case in point, I present to you a 100% unedited post from a 17 year old member of our guild on our internal guild forums.

Posted: 10 Feb 2008 10:18 Post subject: Name changed to protect the retarded.

i want b on 4 a while my internet goin 2get fixed i wont b on maybe 1-2 .weeeks.. im jst lettin every one kno... i might come one here and there cuss ill b at a Internet Lan place= -) welll hope WE GET VASH DWN!!

The amount of spelling and grammatical errors in that short statement caused me physical pain when I read it. I want to just shake him until all the stupid falls out. How can someone who is a junior or senior in high school write that? I mean that is not just ordinary dumb. There are always the not so bright ones that struggle. That is not who I am talking about here. These are people who are just far too lazy to care to write out in plain english what they want to say because they either think it sounds cooler or it saves them time to put out that kind of trash.

I used to give people a hard time when they would correct english constantly. "It's not can I, its MAY I!" Yeah, I used to think those people needed a stiff drink and to relax just a wee little bit. However, with the state of things now, I have changed my mind. Instead of getting them a drink, get them a badge, a shovel and a willingness to beat heads with said shovel until all the stupid is gone. I say deputize the English Correction Force or EFC for short and then support them in their fight to rid the world and the internet of the crimes on the english language. You know what they say, sometimes the gene pool could use a bit of chlorine.

Just consider yourself lucky that stupid isn't contageous. Well ok.. mabye it is, but only when you are drinking with friends or family.