I'ma take you back to when the internet was still one of those things that some people had and some people didn't, say 1998-99 or so. A time when chat rooms were just finding their place and every message wasn't about clicking somewhere to see someone's triple X pictures. A time when most people were completely clueless about what "a/s/l" or "lol" meant, causing the more experienced internet users to laugh at them (I was the former, not the latter). There were no AIM or MSN or Yahoo messengers, we didn't even know what those were. But by the time I was a sophomore in college, EVERYBODY had AIM and/or a Myspace page. You could be in the same dorm, two rooms away and still choose to message somebody over walking your lazy ass over there to talk to them in person. Suddenly no one I knew could live without being connected to everyone they knew 24 hours a day. Eventually came FB, which was limited to college kids at the time, and everyones MS pages fell by the wayside. I admit to being guilty of the constant connectivity, I had all three of those messengers and tried a few others I couldn't figure out. I didn't have a MS or FB page in college, I came into MS near the end when everyone else was starting to migrate to FB. I was also late to the FB party, I didn't get one of those until about a year ago.
As the ways to communicate grew so did the lingo people used in IM's; LMAO, LMFAO, ROTFL (whole lotta laughing going on apparently), none of which I can say I've used. Then we somehow started to revert back to when we passed notes as kids using "R U" and "OMG" which has sadly become the norm for some people in their e-mails, online profiles, etc. It's a pet peeve of mine when people use that kind of lingo constantly but to each their own. I guess there is no official etiquette for IM's. But I was on a site yesterday that allows members to IM each other, a service I usually have turned off because I don't like to be IM'd by random people, (no, not FB, I don't ignore my FB friends). But I must have accidentally turned it back on because I got an IM from someone who literally typed six smiley faces, said hi and then stopped responding altogether. IM'ing is a reciprocal thing, we both have to be engaged in the conversation for it to work. Not that I'm really upset about it since I wouldn't have responded had this person sent me an e-mail message. I just don't like when people IM randomly like that cuz I feel like it's not really fair I guess. They've already gone through my profile but I haven't gone through theirs and it's kinda weird to be put on the spot like that. I don't dislike IM'ing in general, I'm a total whore for emoticons, but it's different when you're chatting with someone you enjoy speaking to who uses actual words to communicate. Maybe it's just another personal pet peeve of mine.
