lexical cluterfuck, or, this generation is boring, or, bring back the sincerity, i hate myself for using this crap too...
"oh man"
"dood"
"let's makeout" e.g., "we're SOOO gonna makeout tonight..."
"stoopid"
"gawd"
"whatevs"
"super"-anything, e.g, "oh man oh man, last night was like, superfun, ya heard?!!!"
"ridic"
"def."
"totally" as in "TOTALLY!!!"
"the worst." e.g., "oh gawd, that shirt she was wearing was the worst."
"mwarg"
"natch"
superfluous repetition, e.g. "we will have a ridic amount of fun. ridic."
"hella"
"later skater" this belongs to a sub-catergory called "throwback words"..."bananas" would also be included in this sub-catergory as would "fresh" "off the hook" "bomb" and "that's pimp!"
"fa' sho"
"yo" e.g., "wanna drink some beers tonight, yo?"
"sho nuff"
"you know how we do"
"harumph"
"dayum!"
"will you marry me" or the ever popular "be my wife!!!"
"ugh" seems to be REALLY popular right now on the "cultural" blogs. e.g., "declaritive followed by an "ugh"
"..."
a few that you don't see much of anymore thank goodness:
irregular capitalization, e.g., "wHat'S Up dOG?"
the radio friendly inversion of shit, "ish"
E-40 (NOT Snoop) "izzle" speak, not even kids in giant hip hop pants and white t-shirts do that anymore.
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9 comments:
Does Your Girlfriend Act Her Age?
http://men.style.com/details/blogs/details/2007/10/does-your-girlf.html#comments
The women you date should behave—and look—like grown-ups, not characters from High School Musical.
-By Simon Dumenco
-Photograph by Greg Broom
Sound off on 30-year-old Hello Kitty addicts in the comment section—then click here to take our quiz to see if you're the real tweenager.
Recently, I found myself at a party in Manhattan, casting sidelong glances at a woman. Her look (baby-doll dress, kinderwhore lip gloss) and behavior (exclaiming "Oh my god, totally!" and text-ing obsessively) screamed tweenager. You know, that hybrid archetype—the one who worships at the altar of Hannah Montana and High School Musical. Everything about the woman telegraphed jailbait—except, that is, for the crow's feet, which suggested that this wannabe tween was pushing 35.
Look around. The 35-going-on-12 woman is everywhere. Man-child Syndrome—the affliction that causes thirtysomething guys to cling to adolescence—may be rampant, but lately it's women who are taking the lead in regressing. Call it the Big Girl Epidemic: women selling versions of themselves that, when you get down to it, are pretty creepy. It's not so much a Lolita thing—the Big Girl isn't trying to be a dewy seductress—but more of a daffy, tweenage thing.
Is this the sort of girl you clawed your way into manhood to date? Think back to what your big brother's girlfriend seemed like when you were a kid: A woman. A w-o-m-a-n woman. Not someone who speaks in acronyms and carries a glitter-covered Sidekick.
"I get the feeling that a lot of women are dressing and acting that way because they think that that's what guys want," says Jean Twenge, associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University and author of Generation Me, a book about American youth culture. "It's the same thing as older women getting plastic surgery. The idea is that what men want is a woman who looks 18. Although they don't usually want a woman who acts 18." Twenge laughs, then adds, "And that's where the problem comes in."
And it is a problem—especially if you're a man who happens to find tween impersonations not only unbecoming but more than a little sad. Unfortunately, as long as our culture reinforces the Big Girl's worst inclinations, the epidemic will persist.
"I've been meditating on the question of why women in their twenties and thirties seem to be obsessed with all things teen—fashion, slang, gossip, et cetera," says Anastasia Goodstein, publisher of ypulse.com, a marketing website. "The reality is that teen culture has come to define pop culture." As the usual markers of American adulthood—marriage, career, kids—get more and more delayed, the simpleminded distractions of adolescence have extended their grip on the adult brain. Man-children may drag their old skateboards and video games with them into their thirties, but Big Girls needn't bother to cling to the pop culture of their youth. "Adult" pop culture has been conveniently colonized by a teen sensibility. Consider Gossip Girls or The Hills. Both shows are endlessly blogged about and compulsively parsed by teenage girls—but they're also cornerstones of thirtysomething women's party conversation. The audiences have converged.
Meanwhile, the female-oriented tabloids—Us Weekly, In Touch, and Star—read like Tiger Beat redux, chronicling the dysfunction of the Lindsays, Britneys, Nicoles, Heidis, and Laurens who have come to dominate the celebrity landscape at the expense of more seasoned female celebrities. And you only need look at the teen/tween style bible Teen Vogue to discover where Big Girls are taking their fashion cues from. According to the demographic stats it supplies to advertisers, nearly 2.8 million readers (almost half the total) of Vogue's little sister are adults.
Dating one of these Big Girls doesn't mean just putting up with jailbait fashion and IMs that say OMG, totally! It means potentially enduring the worst sort of navel-gazing drama. As Twenge points out, arrested development goes hand in hand with self-absorption: Narcissism "is a very adolescent personality trait. Obviously it means you focus on yourself and what's good for you." It used to be that men had the ego market cornered, but now, Twenge says, "there's virtually no difference between the sexes with regard to narcissism. Most of the change has taken place in girls and women." Basically, women have caught up to men by sinking to comparable levels of adolescent self-absorption.
Which makes the idea of actually dating a Big Girl even more unappealing.
Not that, in this postfeminist age, you have to hold out for "I am woman, hear me roar." But "I am girl, hear me giggle"? Uh, no. Totes no.
they had me until "totes no." i don't know what that means.
caitlin, what does that mean?
good article. i would say yes to all of it.
recently i found myself at a bar in the company of two attractive mid-20's women who were speaking in abbreveations. loudly. i didn't like it.
i want to walk away from it all. everytime i text someone something like "hey, let's meet up tonight!" i want to bash my head with a brick. exclamation points make me sick but i still use them. i don't think i would know how to text without using them.
and i have a job where i sit in front of a blaring computer screen for 9 hours a day looking to be entertained by the internet, and interent-speak.
i stopped writing "def." three months ago, i wish other's would stop it too. but it's hard, i know.
i feel like winston smith most days. "ingsoc" is the old abbrevs. don't hate, i didn't read it in highschool. i read it at UCSF.
all relative:
john, aren't you the one that said you use "natch" in real life too?
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Last night I had a conversation where I said that I hate talking about my blog (I prefer "site", for the record), because it is so self indulgent and immediate gratification based that it wreaks of middle-child syndrome and ultimately, non-intellent hyperbole.
i said that if was writing a book, i'd want to talk about my book all the god damn day, because books take time, and real talent, and research, and effort, and passion.
to make a post like say, the chocolate one i just put up, takes about 5 minutes and 60 clicks of a mouse, but people still read it. i am not sure why, but they do.
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do you remember that conversation we had where I said if I were to write a book about my life right now, I'd want to leave out both the internet and texting so as not to date myself? You said it would make the story insincere, I just think it would class it up a bit.
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i don't think exclamation points are the same as "def" "natch" or "totes"...I think they just make whatever you are saying sound a bit more enthused, which has always been their purpose anyway. consider, if you will, "im coming over" vs. "im coming over!"...which text would you rather receive?
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"totes no" = "totally not", and i think Details (which is, coincidentally, the magazine where I read that term "grazing" (where one texts a bunch of potential booty calls at once and waits to see who responds))was just trying to be cute.
and being cute is the epitome of sustainable blogging at the moment. just ask www.sexandtheivy.com, or, you know, me.
i just realized i spelled "intelligent" wrong. naturally.
i watch gossip girl.
"john, aren't you the one that said you use "natch" in real life too?"
yes, and i want to hit myself with bricks.
"do you remember that conversation we had where I said if I were to write a book about my life right now, I'd want to leave out both the internet and texting so as not to date myself? You said it would make the story insincere, I just think it would class it up a bit."
yeah, i remember, we were at the castle, if i said "insincere" that was a poor choice of words...what i meant was why worry about dating yourself? i like site-specificity, i don't think talking about the internet in a book about the story of your life makes the book any less interesting if your life has a lot to do with the internet, that is.
"i don't think exclamation points are the same as "def" "natch" or "totes"...I think they just make whatever you are saying sound a bit more enthused, which has always been their purpose anyway. consider, if you will, "im coming over" vs. "im coming over!"...which text would you rather receive?"
honestly, i'm just never that excited. so i feel like an asshole when i'm all "i'm at the bar!" or whatever, because really my dispostion is more "i'm at the bar"...it's annoying, faux is annoying.
""totes no" = "totally not", and i think Details (which is, coincidentally, the magazine where I read that term "grazing" (where one texts a bunch of potential booty calls at once and waits to see who responds))was just trying to be cute."
no way, that's what that means? i don't like it. that's one of those speaking abbrevs that doesn't really make things any easier to say (or type for that matter)...i liked the snarky end of the article, i just didn't get what the snarky abbreveation meant.
john, i think you are a grumpopotamous today.
logan, i also watch gossip girl.
caitlin,
sorry, yeah, not good today.
i might walk home in the freeze to punish myself, to punish my face.
wait! i just realized what this whole post really means: you want to be a new sincerist.
better revise yr manifesto.
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