They are a multicolored, multicultural race who walk the streets of America with their heads down and their eyes fixed on the electronic devices in their hands. His fingers move at the speed of light over the tiny buttons on mobile phones to send encrypted messages to any VBF, or NE1 whose handheld device or laptop accepts his transmissions.
You might see them doing their primary click, click, click under a table in restaurants, during church services, in classrooms, at the mall, or while driving a car. Some even click click while lying in their beds making love.
They are ubiquitous. They are changing the way we communicate with each other.
They are the Textatoids, an emerging Humanoid-Android mutation who converse with each other and the world around them in long texts of 140 to 160 characters. The conversation that they engage in, the written communication that they use is Text Speak.
Text Speak is the emergent textatoid dialect by which the speaker can convey a lengthy thought by abbreviating phonetically. Text Speak uses letters, numbers, and substitute characters for complete English sentences.
It is the relentless march of the texters, the SMS (Short Message Service) vandals who are doing to our language what Atilla the Hun did to his neighbors fifteen hundred years ago.
My wife and daughter have been bitten by the Textatoids. Everyone suffers from the disease of Textoiditis.
Just this morning my twelve year old daughter Denise passed our kitchen in a catatonic state. Her fingers slid over the keyboard of the smartphone I bought here for Christmas as she muttered this unintelligible gibberish:
“My smmr hols wr CWOT. B4 we use 2go2 NY 2C my brother his GF & thr 3:-@ kids FTF. ILNY he’s a gr8 plc.”
My wife Annie used to be a Stepford wife. Annie has been transformed into a Textatoid. She has a cell phone growing out of her right ear. Annie translated my daughter’s Text Speak for me into gibberish.
“What Denise told Ron is that her summer vacation was a complete waste of time. Before, we used to go to New York to see my brother, his girlfriend, and their three kids screaming face to face. She loves New York. It’s a big square.”
Why couldn’t Denise have said that in plain language?
Denise and the Textatoids are destroying the King’s English: They’re looting the King’s score! They are attacking the King’s judgments! Violating his vocabulary!
The Textatoids must be stopped!
It turns out that it is not only modern youth who do not bother to spell their words correctly in communications. Text speech was being used by lazy Victorian poets over 100 years ago. 4 real!
At a recent English language history exhibit in London, the British Library featured excerpts of poetry from around the 1860s. Much of the poetry text features a similar style of abbreviations to those we insert on touch screens and instant messaging windows.
Here is an example of Victorian Text Speak from the poem “Essay to Miss Catherine Jay”
He says he loves usXS,
UR virtuous and Y’s,
In XLNCULXL,
All the others in their selves.
OMG! Is a dead Victorian poet channeling through my son?
The United Nations (UN) recently reported that the invasion of the textatoids is spreading throughout the world. According to the UN, text messaging is the most widely used mobile data service in the world, with 74% of the 2.6 billion mobile phone users worldwide actively sending and receiving text messages.
This new dialect only has one written form. Any attempt to say it out loud is impractical and unusually difficult, even though all the details are words and phrases used in everyday speech.
I have tried to teach myself Text Speak. I have failed. I cannot grasp the nuances of language. Unlike traditional English usage, with Text Speak it is impossible to use body language, voice inflection, tone, or eye contact when communicating with others.
OMG!
I have come to loathe “texting” because of the distractions it has imposed on my one-time wife from Stepford. This past Fourth of July, Annie’s use of her cell phone to ‘text’ Denise with a ‘pup gal mlk’ message while in heavy traffic, caused our 2011 Cadillac to be totaled!
That really pissed me off!
Textatoids no longer use their cell phones to talk! They hold entire conversations through text messages. Weren’t telephones invented to talk? You want to write messages, that’s what email is for! Do you want to use your cell phone while driving? All right! Then talk! Don’t text! At least if you talk, you can keep your eyes on the road!
Textatoids like my wife and daughter will be responsible for the death of conversation as we Baby Boomers know it. How do I know this?
Denise used her smartphone to send me an email asking for permission to invite six of her friends over for a sleepover.
My four-year-old son, Jeffery, who uses a childish form of Pig Latin, translated what I said to Denise.
“Adad edsay oooyea anca avway a artypa”.
“Oooooolka.” Denise said.
The night of the sleepover Denise’s friends came over. They spent the night sitting in a circle on the living room floor. Not a human word was uttered. Instead of using their cell phones to text each other, the teenage Textatoids opted to use their barbaric expressions to send and receive silly text messages.
“ZUP? 420!” said a Textatoid boy.
“Suff!” said a Textatoid girl.
“You SorG?” asked a boy Textatoid
“URS!” said the Textatoid girl
“urWOMBAT!” replied a Textatoid boy
“WWJD?” Denise asked.
There you go. The end of the conversation. The end of civilization.
As technology changes, it affects the way we communicate. But basic communication and interpersonal skills shouldn’t be left out.
We Baby Boomers can’t afford to be Luddites. We must find a way to embrace the textatoid invasion while holding on to our core values and skills, such as the ability to write a coherent sentence in English with punctuation and correct subject-verb agreement.
When her sleepover was over, Denise came over and kissed me on the cheek to say thank you.
“143,” Denise said.
My head bowed. I looked at the palm of my right hand that had transformed into the shape of a cell phone. The fingers of my left hand danced on the keyboard of my cell phone.
“1432”. I said.
