i'm just saying, it's odd

So I want to check this one:

A coworker of mine in her mid-forties has been emailing back and forth with a guy who seemed okay, but kind of went weird near the end. After she decided he was--weird--she showed me his emails.

Claim: in his forties/fifties, living with his mother--and uses lolspeech and netspeak natively in his email along with multiple exclamation point use and lack of capital letters BUT no regular textspeech or l33t that isn't in common use. It didn't read normal for two people getting to know each other via email, but it read very normal for chat.

I just don't see this as a likely combination. The funny thing is, I'd glanced at earlier email, but it wasn't until the last one that it hit me why it kept feeling off about his language. Which may mean I have been reading online way too long. I'm also worrying I spent several seconds trying to remember what dialect IDEK represents and kind of like, hate myself. Net dialects == new field of study? Would the chans be considered the purest form?

Comments

Re: curiosity killed this cat

[tricksterquinn.livejournal.com]

Actually, I don't think !!!1!111eleventyone1!!! is at all l33t (or 1337), and I'm pretty sure native l33t-speakers would frown on it. I'm not sure which dialect I would put it in, but it reads to me as a relatively natively fannish usage, like 'mah hede iz pastede on yayes' and such. So, memes, rather than l33t.

Proper l33t would be things like: n00b, l0l, l33t itself. n3rd.
The wiki article on l33t (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haxxor) is pretty interesting, actually.

I am completely fascinated by internet dialects, and the ways in which they vary from... er... region to region, I guess is the best way to put it?

My own day-to-day dialect and accent is very hard for people in meatspace to place, and I think a lot of that is because it's very strongly post- (er, peri-?)internet, highly colloquial, and internationally influenced - rather than having a proper regional American accent, I have one which commonly uses UK workings or structures (*eyes sandwicharmada and doctor_toc*) beside Southern-influenced vowels (all artaxastra and penknife), Westernisms (*blames the entire state of Utah), my native New Englanderness, and twelve solid years of fandom and internet culture. People IRL can't figure it out, because it doesn't sound like I come from a single place, and I do sometimes have to explain the meaning of a given term (I think "skeevy" was the most recent of those. Also, "Mary Sue" comes up from time to time).

Er, sorry. Didn't mean to go off on that.

Re: curiosity killed this cat

[seperis.livejournal.com]

You know, I want to say !!!1!111eleventyone1!!! is supposed to be a mockery of l33t, since didn't l33t develop in the usenet forums or am I mixing up my origins?

Re: curiosity killed this cat

[pocketmouse]

I'm pretty sure !111!!!!!eleventy!!!111 is just a mockery of capslocking and overenthusiasm. It certainly isn't l33t related. And I think l33t came from gaming as well.

Re: curiosity killed this cat

[tylergrrls.livejournal.com]

I always thought the whole !!111! thing was making fun of the overenthusiastic people who couldn't type and lost the shift key half way through their row of endless !!!!!!!s. But I have NO IDEA for sure. Sometimes I totally make up reasons for stuff. ;)

-Bree

Re: curiosity killed this cat

[tricksterquinn.livejournal.com]

What they said. *points* The "eleventy-one" part I associate with Lotrips but that may be just me.

Re: curiosity killed this cat

[jamafanta.livejournal.com]

The "regions" aspect of internet dialects is what I find so interesting, because they have so little to do with geographic location. Except that each user is influenced in some way by their background, geographical or otherwise... yeah, I would be REALLY interested in an exhaustive study done on the topic! So many subcultures, and so much of it seeming almost illicit, in the sense that there's no way to identify the members in RL. Very fun!

Re: curiosity killed this cat

[fyrdrakken]

My own day-to-day dialect and accent is very hard for people in meatspace to place, and I think a lot of that is because it's very strongly post- (er, peri-?)internet, highly colloquial, and internationally influenced... People IRL can't figure it out, because it doesn't sound like I come from a single place, and I do sometimes have to explain the meaning of a given term (I think "skeevy" was the most recent of those. Also, "Mary Sue" comes up from time to time).

Been there, definitely -- native Texan (second- or third-generation) but I've spent a number of years in heavily-British fandoms (plus the six months living in the UK on a student work permit) and been in online fandoms since 1995, so my idioms definitely bounce erratically between various sources. (Oddly enough, I once had someone who met me IRL after getting to know me online that I sound in person nothing like I do online. At the time I think I put it down to having a severely rural accent in spoken communication but the ability to sound like a college graduate online -- now I'm wondering to what extent I'd already internalized context of communications and learned not to use ten-dollar words in meatspace outside of a very few contexts.)