Posts Tagged ‘slang’

…and it's just so like, um, whatevs

Wednesday, March 19th, 2008


I love the English language. I love it in all its forms, accents and dialects. I also love slang, but have succumbed to the fact that the older you get, the stupider you sound using it.

 

With that in mind, it has been with particular disdain that I have watched the rising popularity of the latest trend in slang. While previous slang was clever and had meaning, it seems this generation is completely uninspired when it comes to word play. The mere shortening of words is the preferred lingo of many these days and it is pissing me the hell off.

 

Every conversation I overhear now is peppered with ‘obvs’, ‘totes’, ‘natch’, ‘espesh’ and other such idiocies. Are these people offended by the notion of a couple of extra syllables?

 

I was convinced that this abbreviation trend was limited to dumb blonde valley girls or high schoolers but no, I regularly hear people in their 20s and 30s using them. If you are one of those people, kindly take a moment to slap some sense into yourself. I don’t mind doing it for you, if you’re having trouble making hand-to-face contact.

 

I can handle teenagers using them, because we’re not meant to understand anything those moody twats say anyway. But if you’re in your 20s or 30s and you’re talking like that, it’s time to let go of the Peter Pan complex and grow the hell up. Do you not realize how ridiculous you sound? Nothing screams ‘wanker’ like a 30 year old man throwing the word ‘totes’ around in conversations.

 

I recently had to stop reading, what had previously been, one of my favorite blogs due to the authors daily overuse of pointless word abbreviation. That’s how annoying I find it. And I know this shit has gone too far when I picked up a very prominent mainstream Canadian magazine and found the word ‘natch’ within one of the articles. I have half a mind to write a letter of complaint. (It’s not like we’re talking frikkin’ Seventeen magazine here. It’s a magazine for educated adults – isn’t it journalism 101 to know your frikkin’ audience?)

 

This kind of dumb speak goes right along with the ‘adults using baby talk’ trend we saw last year, which has sadly not gone away yet. This was characterized by the word ‘vajayjay’. I don’t know what the hell a vajayjay is, but I do know that I have a VAGINA. Yeah, that’s right. I am woman, hear me roar bitches. What the hell is wrong with the word vagina anyway? Do we really have to give it a code name? It started on a TV show, then spread like wild fire. I challenge you to find a woman’s magazine over the past year that hasn’t had an article on ‘Vajayjay Health’. Even Oprah is using that word now. I’m starting a campaign to bring vagina back – err, you know what I mean.

 

So, how about we just leave the slang in the hands of its rightful owners – teens. Take a minute to acquaint yourself with the nanosecond more it takes to say ‘totally’ rather than ‘totes’ or ‘especially’ rather than ‘espesh’, because if you don’t, I’m like, totes gonna have to bitch slap you, like, really hard, natch.

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