Jilted

So Twitter and I are kind of on a break... I didn't say anything before now because, well, I didn't want you to worry. But now I'm not so sure we can work it out. I wonder if this could be the end?

He's just so damned impetuous! I mean, all I did was tell him I needed some time to deal with a few personal issues - but then I come back and he's all but dumped me. Do you know he's turned some of our mutual friends against me? No, really - they hardly talk to me any more, they don't call me back, and some of them just stopped being my friends altogether.

He makes me feel so awkward everytime we hang out now. Nothing I say seems to go over well with him anymore. All I get is this steely silence whenever I try to talk to him. He's even gone back to palming me off onto his creepy spammer friends again. I really thought we were both bigger than that to be honest, but I guess I was wrong.

He's really changed. I mean, he even looks different! I just don't know who he is anymore. I thought we had something special, but I'm really starting to get the feeling that he moved on while I was gone. Granted, two months is a long time, but it's not *that* long. Is it? I guess all those stories I heard about him before we got together were true... he's just not a one-woman platform. Could he have found someone wittier, someone with more time? Could I have been replaced?

No! I refuse to admit defeat. I'm not ready to give up just yet. I have to find a way to get that old thing back. Some way to feel that newness again. That feeling of never wanting to be apart. I just have to.

I want to go back to the way things used to be.

Breaking all the rules

First it was email and text messages. Then it was instant messaging - and now social media. Comunication today is about doing it as quickly as possible and with as little effort as possible. Great. Only problem is, in the process we are giving in to sheer chaos!

Everything I ever thought I knew about proper written communication is questioned on a daily basis in this brave new world. I used to scoff at text speak when I first learned of its existence. To me, 'words' - nay, character arrangements - like l8r, 4get, and m8 were among the most vile assaults on the written word that I had ever witnessed. Soon enough though, it became acceptable to me to replace the occasional 'to' and 'for' with their numerical derivatives in an sms (text message). But never, and I mean *never*, would I be caught using anything as abhorrent as '4m' in place of 'from'. I mean, honestly - "four-m"? WTF!?!

I gave in... just a little. But still, some modicum of order was retained. I still had rules. Human beings need rules. They form a baseline... The measure against which we deduce our level of conformity; our edginess; where we lie on the good-to-bad continuum. The problem comes in when we all have our own rules, and not one universally recognised set of them. Nowhere is this better illustrated than on that most-beloved of social media platforms - Twitter. (God lord, but we're a neurotic bunch! Just rules, principles, and varying degrees of OCD up the wazoo!) And that, dear readers is why I love it so much.

I had a very interesting discussion with two of my fave tweeps today about the use of LOL. Yes, 'LAUGH OUT LOUD'. Well, that's what Urban Dictionary will tell you it means, but don't be fooled. There are infinite nuances to its use. It's more than just an acronym. Depending just on its placement within a phrase, it can also be used to convey sarcasm, narcissism and (apparently) even condescension. Who would have known, huh?

I disagreed with some of those points. I love to LOL. In fact, I'm the self-appointed captain of #TeamLOL. I LOL all over the place. Indiscriminately. And I'm not ashamed. I've even been known to LMAO at times (yes, you read right). But ROFL? ROFL is reserved for very very special circumstances - it's just a rule of  mine. Some people, on the other hand, LOL as often as they ROFL and LMAO even more. They say BRB when they actually won't, and FML when they actually have it pretty good.

Some people break the cardinal (in my opinion) rule of tweeting - going over 140 characters - with that detestable 'twitlonger'. Others' RTing is just all over the place. Disgusting! (I swear sometimes I think all the sickos of the world are congregated on Twitter.)

So much delinquency... But my worst; my absolute worst are those chaos-mongering smart asses who not only break the rules, but think they can just make them all up as they go along.

Who do they think they are?