It's a little churlish of me to pick at the example given, but I think that would more properly be:
"What're you up to?"
Even that is still fairly colloquial by the use of "up to". I tried rewriting it more formally, however, and I found the intention was lost. "What are you doing?" sounds like an imperious demand.
I avoid using text/l33t abbreviations for the large part, except where I'm being ironic, sarcastic or rushed. Even when I do use them, I capitalise them to make it clear they are an abbreviation. Ones I pull out regularly:
- IIRC - if I remember correctly
- TTFN - ta ta for now
- AFAIK - as far as I know
- AFK - away from keyboard
As you can see, all of those are very functional. When it comes to the expression of
emotion, however, the abbreviations irritate me. If I've taken the time to express something amusing and the response is "lol", I feel as if the other person has given me only a token response, just paying lip service to the idea that its good to give positive feedback. When you "lol", are you smiling a little, a lot, chuckling, giggling, guffawing, laughing, laughing loudly, laughing uncontrollably (and I know it's not the last 'cause you can still type)...? I don't know. And I find that "lol" makes me not care, either. Won't take the time to give me a thought-out or worthwhile response? Fine, I'll not take the time to converse with you.
Sure, that's my irritability speaking and practically I don't enforce that line I express above. But surely it can't be so difficult to spend just a second or two longer to write what you really mean than just palming off with a "lol" for when you smirk a little and "rofl" for when you chuckle? Mmm?
(The "you" I use above I don't mean to be specific, but in a general "you, the people" sense.)
Smilies are different, however. Smilies are there to support text, to give it flavour that might otherwise take another paragraph to express. It's not a few second, but quite possibly many minutes that a smilie helps one shortcut and in quick fire online conversation that can be crucial. They don't stand for anything themselves, per se, they just support the words around them, usually preceding them.
All that said, the 'net is a very diverse beast and has room for different cultures in different places. Each community arrives at its own "standard" for how communication should occur, what the acceptable norms are. THN doesn't like txt or l33t because a bunch of us longer term members don't want to spend our time decoding hastily written one-liners just so we can realise they only say "lol, I r0x, u suxx0r" or something else equally inane.
I'll come back to one specific thing, though:
Gombol said:
i know some of you likes to say "hehe" and what not, which is fair enough, but when your typing quick "lol" is just easier.
Easier isn't the point, I feel. Taking the time to provide a meaningful response
is the point. I'd rather you took two minutes to write four words that were expressive than two 2 seconds to type some massively overused abbreviation that doesn't actually tell me anything useful.
)
