lmao

Sup?

Every holiday season when I don't read or write enough and am instead bombarded by cyber mumbo jumbo, I am led to consider the short and long term effects of cyber literacy. In fact, I am increasingly feeling I cannot keep up with the fast pace and unpredictability of this world. Maybe I am getting old but when I recently had to ask a friend of mine what "Lmao"*, "rofl" and "Lmfao"* meant- after putting off asking out of pride- I knew I was losing it, the 'it' I had back in high school. Yet here I am blogging, though I was never a journal-writing, diary-confiding type o' gal.

When Walter Ong suggested that literacy restructures consciousness, he had a point. Subsequent to my cyber literacy I have had to think harder to spell things correctly while using pen and pape, and that's just one case in point. I am inclined to drop my 'g's at the end of words like chillin, goin, doin which is so not kool, sorry cool. Ong argued that knowledge of writing affects expression, but that the reverse also occurs. Writing helps organize thoughts prior to putting them on paper and in ways that orality alone supposedly didn't/doesn't. While not implying some inherent superiority to literacy over orality, especially since the latter preceded the former, I buy into Ong's general thesis. My cyber literacy- while largely empowering, educational, furturist (yadayadayada) and just really kinda kool- may be the enemy of my good old reading and writing skills. I am not sure I should just sit back and lmfao* while that happens.

For the primitive like me, a KEY:
*lmao- laugh/laughing my ass off
*lmfao- laugh/laughing my fat ass off
*rofl- rolling on floor laughing
lol- laugh/laughing out loud
sup- what's up?