Hey you kids—get off my lawn!

 I’m totally NOT a fan of this trend of people using girl or lady as a modifier for jobs, activities and such. You know, like girl boss, girl chef, girl movie, etc. Maybe I’m just old and not in on the joke but it comes off (to ME) as reductive, patronizing and condescending. 

e.g., Girl Chef sounds like: isn’t that cute—the head chef’s a girl. As though the very idea of a woman overseeing the operations and staff of a restaurant, planning a menu, creating new dishes, etc. is on par with cats playing poker. Lady General? Sure, that’s a brandy damn new occurrence. Oh wait, what about Boudica, Zenobia, Tomoe Gozen, Buffalo Calf Road and more.

THIS usage though (at left), I can totally get behind.

I’m also not keen on people using insane amounts of emojis and abbreviations in email communication. Yes, in this case insane is in the eye of the beholder.

I understand that emojis are an effective and useful way to add tone to a statement. Conveying mood via text is not an innate skill—I get it. A smiley face can indicate that the words, which might otherwise sound cold, were intended to be warm and possibly friendly. A frowny face shifts the meaning of “I’m fine” to “I’m functioning but I’m NOT happy.” Crying face or laughing face? Same idea. Emojis can add clarification.

Shit’s gotten a bit out of control though. More than a few folks (all much younger than I) seem to use it as some kind of bizarro world punctuation. I’m hard pressed to read through an email that’s littered with these images.

Even worse—when people use online acronyms (like LOL, ROFL, TL;DR, etc.) in the same way. I can sort out what some, def not all, mean but it’s annoying as all hell and a distraction from what the emailer is attempting to communicate.

Also, is the lame ass, failed writer REALLY laughing out loud? Are they honestly rolling on the floor laughing? Were they too damn busy to type out that they they’ve the attention span of a gnat so your post was too long/didn't read?

The people I most often see using LOL and ROFL as punctuation are penis possessing shitposters who like to end their misogynistic, racist or otherwise abusive statements with LOL. Are they using the old gaslighting, demeaning “it was just a joke—lighten up” in advance to quash incoming fire? Maybe they imagine they’re in a dive bar surrounded by their similarly troglodytic mates who will obsequiously laugh at any garbage he spews?

What does the overuse and abuse of emojis and internet acronyms tell me? That the writer is either an exceptionally untalented communicator or an intellectually lazy sod. That and they need to retake middle school English and pay attention this time.