On Internet Lingo, A Treatise

What follows is perhaps the best treatment of internet shorthand I've ever read.  This, dear readers, is the product of the first-class, though somewhat bent, mind that calls itself Herr Fernseher.  It's referring to a comment thread, but you don't need the context to appreciate it.  Enjoy!  -Brent

Rotfl, lol, n lmao. K, not really. Trent, Kent, 6ent Chez has a ? Caring about typos and grammer? I mean grammar? R u on 420? 2B an ass or not 2B an ass, that is the ? Golly G, Enlish is EZ. –brb, g2p. (drank 2 much T)

K, where was I? O. C, I think anyone who bitches about blog spelling, there stupid. Theirs a time for being critical about Eglish, and they’res a time to chill. ‘Course I’ve been likened unto L Duderino. WTF.

OMG. Personally, I LOVE morphing the language (Ex: in a past comment, bRENT, you wrote “It’s pretty rare I get caught out on usage.” I’ve heard “It’s pretty rare I get caught on usage”, and also “It’s pretty rare I get called out on usage”, but I’ve never heard “caught out on usage.” Now, I’m not saying you are wrong at all. I know for a fact you are better read than I am and have a better grasp of a broader range of English idiom. But even if you are the first person in the history of the English language to use the phrase “caught out on usage”, so what? Everyone knows exactly what you meant, which means your language is “A-OK” (whatever that means—get my point?). And English would not be the rich, expressive language that it is if people didn’t make shit up with it.

You wanna know something else? I know some commas go inside the quotes and some don’t AND that my style manuals are in boxes in one of three places and I don’t care to bother with searching the world-wide-wasteland for how to punctuate properly. (Dear reader, your shit is posted online; do you really think I should look to the internet for style tips? By the same token, my shit is now posted here as well, so feel free to discount my opinions too.)

Should we care about misusage and misspelling? $h!#, when you write be critical, when you read, be lenient.

Fucking word Nazis. I think they are gay. Not ghey. That’s right, I said gay. And I don’t mean homosexual, though some of those anal twats might be.
And for the record, I think the term “ghey” is gay. Mocking it makes me feel gay (I could specify “dictionary.com def. 1”, but hell, interpret it how you want). Play emoticon: “:)”
And letz NOT 3v3N 93T N2 l33t. The fact is, as soon as TV is offered via direct brain transmission, 1 in 6 people will get it. Then the remaining old school, caveman-style TV viewers will see glitzy commercials flashing on their antiquated screens all about their coolest “plugged-in” friends, and that’s when most of the socially/recreationally-challenged sheep will decide that they too should get the implants as well. And when that finally happens, the only people who will give a shit about reading, misspelled or otherwise, will be the remaining 1 out of 6: old cranks like me, hopefully living on a distant farm somewhere with a shitload of books and guns.

Btw, Capital wit, I wanna see yo gaba gaba, especially the episode with Jack Black. I hear he tears it up! (and, WIT, props for knowing where the apostrophe in “y’all” goes! You make Texas proud.)

Oh yeah, and to GBF’s credit, has anyone ever really “spelt” anything? I think he could just be having fun, the same as me! :D

&BTW, 0u812 was an underrated album. And now, back to my Guinness...

P.S. Editted for spelling AND mispelling.