OT: A question for Role-Playing Gamers, Sci-Fi Addicts, and Internet Users

[Sy Ali]

On 1/19/06, Scott Elcomb <psema4-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> So here's my question - is 'net-speak developing into what used to be
> referred to (in said games and novels) as "common" speak?

Absolutely not.

Think of it this way.. when you go out into the net, are there
freakish corners whose use of language causes you offence?

Leetspeak, idiots with bad spelling, people who misuse caps, people
who use too many commas in a sentance, people who can't spell
sentence.

Language will ebb and flow in various directions at various paces, and
there will be "sections" as it were, of netspace which will follow
varying trends.  At no point will any of those trends become
particularly "common" because the people who follow those trends are
idiots.

And non-idiots are doing all of the buying, selling and supporting of
the net.  All the real content out there will shy away from the common
tongue.  As people grow up they'll be absorbed into the body of adult
contributors.

Now.. it's fair to ask if that body of idiots will become empowered
enough could their mannerisms somehow become common between them?  I
suppose some trends have become common.  Emotocons for example.  Some
other plain text concepts are still around to some degree.. /italics/
*bold* _underline_ -strikethrough- but that stuff's sortof stuck in
email still.

Emotocons have evolved into pretty little graphics.. that's become a
common language.  I'm still mad about that.

And then you can examine particular online experiences.. various games
do share some lingo, but many of them have their own specific lingo. 
A lot of the language changes are just shortforms.  I think the
shortform concept itself could be considered common.


Think of it this way.. there are a lot of little girls out there who
are wearing boots.  They're wearing boots because they're "cool". 
Most of them don't even know why it's cool.  At some point some loser
celeb went on a spending spree and bought some fancy fur boots.  Now
everywhere I go I see varying forms of this fad.  Some are decent
knockoffs with stupid-looking furry boots, some are just frilled and
some are just boots.  The boot isn't some kind of "common fashion"
it's a trend.

Two things are going to happen:
* The population will slowly grow up and will begin to exert pressure
in their immediate group to stop being a bunch of followers or at
least stop looking so stupid.
* Enough of the younger generation will come in and not really get
this "old" trend.. and they'll pick up something else instead.

Eventually the fad will die out because it's fairly "loud" right now. 
Maybe jeans were a loud trend but that somehow stuck so I'm sure
there's more to this.


As an exercise, pick any little girl trend out.. because they're easy
to see.  Crimped hair, top-knots, died hair, piercings, single streaks
of colour.

Pick funny guy trends out.. baggy pants, sports clothing, baseball
caps on wrong.  Oversized baseball caps.  Hey, leaving the tag on was
cool at one point.

Now see all that translated into type.  Bunches of munchkins, the lot
of them.  Trends will go here and there.  What sticks might become a
common tongue, except for the fact that the major scene is still..
corporate interest and.. well you and I really.  Will man pages start
being translated into that "common"?  Nope.  Ok, bad example.. they're
not really english anyways.  Let's take the extreme.. will openly
collaborated documentation use elements of some kind of common tongue?
 No.

The 'common' which might exist would only ever be some kind of
underclass idiotspeak used in casual conversation.  Even then it'll
rise and fall like tides as various trends pop up and are eventually
evicted from general interest.


I suppose the one particularly curious angle is.. can commercialism
somehow capitalise on idiotspeak to better communica.. uh.. brainwash
and advertise to an audience?  The one thing which has been done is to
fabricate the trends so as to better capitalize on them.

I'm thinking popular music for that one.  Can that sort of
trend-creation translate to type or to the internet?  .. that's a
multi-billion dollar question.
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