The AFU and Urban Legend Archive AFU Guides afu language Select a topic - - - - - - - - Home Searches AFU FAQ - - - - - - - - AFU Animals Books Celebrities Classic Collegiate Death Disney Drugs Food GIF Language Legal Medical Misc Movies Politics Products Religion Science Sex Songs TV - - - - - - - - Other sites

From: Matthew Rabuzzi <rabuzzi.....@loc251.tandem.com>
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
Subject: Re: Acronyms vs. Emoticons
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 11:52:13 -0800

Harry MF Teasley <het3@panix.com> writes: : Bob (ram24@cornell.edu) wrote, not unreasonably:
: >
: > > This isn't conversation.
: > Oh, my. You mean I've been sitting here reading all this stuff, thinking
: > it was people sending information back and forth, when in fact it is not?
: It shares some similarities to conversation, but Usenet posting is not
: conversation. There are some fundamental differences, asynchronicity
: being the chief one.

In particular, this asynchronicity affords choosing and weighing one's words in leisure not available in a tete-a-tete conversation; it means that instead of uttering/writing as the maggot bites, one can actually compose, a creative act for the writer and pleasure for the reader. To indite is delight, exaration is exhilaration.

As to AFU's upholding its own standards when it uses its own peculiar slang and acronyms, I have a divided reaction. Common expressions like FOAF and UL should certainly be allowed, as every discipline has its own jargon. Maxims like "The world is a very big place" may look rather precious and twee when abbreviated to TWIAVBP, but their frequent use makes this justifiable, at least when a one-line email query to the poster is all it takes for one to get the translation.

On the other hand are the shibboleths used to identify the in-crowd and to jeer at the out-crowd, words like "voracity" and "cow orker" and now "pendantry". These are interesting initially because they're playful. Then they close ranks to become a source of group pride, also to the good. But then unfortunately they become perpetual troll bait for the poster who doesn't read AFU long enough to absorb this quirk of the culture. True, it doesn't (or shouldn't) take long for the deliberate misuse of (i.e playing with) these words to become apparent, but to my taste the ensuing jeering and hooting is too much of a monkey's reaction.

On the third hand (with writing my subject, surely the polybrachiate scribe Lord Ganesha can lend me a hand), skeptical thinking is what AFU is about, and jeering goes well with that, especially when done in AFU's frequently stylish manner (or stylus manner, using Ganesha's broken tusk). We have the cutting remark layered with a badinage, we have trains of thought shunted onto strange raillery, we have inventive invective. This can be fun to read; though of course difficult for the ridiculee, it can be endured and hopefully seen as a learning experience.

As to smileys, I've stopped paying any attention to them. They lack the nuance of smiles in person, retaining but ambiguity and unexpressiveness. To me they do not embody any meaning, but insofar as some posters think they do and so leave off their own thoughts and nuances, smileys subtract from the quality of posts. Like the Cheshire-Cat's grin, smileys have no body, no meat to them; like the Cheshire-Cat's grin, smileys ought to vanish.

Matthew "Shibboleths are so corny -- just like the Eleusinian Mysteries" Rabuzzi