All you have to do is look at your Twitter feed to see the devolution of our language. “U hv 2 b kidding me, rite? FOL!” is just one of many tweets assaulting my senses today. And who do we have to blame for all of this?
Is it Twitter creator Jack Dorsey? No. This is all Prince’s doing.
With such song titles as “Nothing Compares 2 U,” “I Would Die 4 U,” and “The One U Wanna C,” he taught us how to meet a 140 character limit before we even knew what that was.
But his alphadecimalization of the written language wasn’t enough for him; he then changed his name to a picture of a sea monkey. Do you know how much more you can cram into one tweet if your Twitter handle is @(picture of a sea monkey)?
Of course, there have always been stupid people, even before Prince/Sea Monkey. I remember one time in 7th grade, a kid named Kaipo (not his real name, it was Kaleo) who sat next to me, was hard at work drawing on his desk. He created a masterpiece of #2 pencil on plywood of him surfing what looked to be a 25-foot wave. In big bold letters he wrote, “KAIPO IS OSUM.”
The last word was obviously giving him trouble, as he repeatedly mouthed it silently with a look of confusion on his face. After five minutes of this, I turned to him and said, “What’s the problem?”
“Is that how you spell ‘awesome’?” he asked.
“Totally,” I replied. I didn’t have the heart to tell him he was an idiot.
So he returned to finish drawing seagulls above his wave, clearly in “o” of his surfing prowess.
That brings us back to today, where signs of the epidemic of dumb (“The Epidumbic”, if you will) are everywhere. I just moved to a new house and the landlord at the old place, with good intentions of preserving my privacy, posted this sign:
Yes, it actually says, “do not DISTURD tenants.”
Well, I should hope not. I do not require the assistance of strangers in this matter. I disturd myself daily just fine, thank you. And when I do it is osum. FOL!