What happened to chivalry? As someone who is an opponent of technology, I resort to blaming it – “it” being texting – for the shortening of words like the ever-so incessant “lol” and the many others that so often have me quickly looking for clues on Urban Dictionary. For instance, I had no clue what “smh” meant, I would sit there staring at my phone trying to decipher that specific and infuriating code; “suck my (insert word)” or ‘show me him?’. No, instead it means “shaking my head.” Are you serious? Why couldn’t you just type that out instead of causing the rupture of at least three of my veins.
More recently, texting has been integrated into not only our social lives, but also our love lives. Us girls used to sit together for hours, giggling and decoding every single word, gesture, blink and breath from the two second conversation we had with our crushes (two seconds from him meant two years of talk for us). Today, that same group of squealing girls will be crowded around one tiny mobile phone. That’s right boys, it may be strange, but now every period, “lol,” “yea,” etc. that you use will be devoured by our hungry eyes and spat back up as a soliloquy proclaiming love that might as well have been written by Shakespeare himself. Every word could change the course of your future with this girl. I once stopped texting a boy because he refused to use any punctuation whatsoever. I may seem like a stickler about grammar, but I wanted to be able to look back at our lovely texts and not get a twitch in my eye.
As a college girl, these confusing situations have happened to me on more than one occasion. I recently hooked up with a friend of mine after ignoring his advances for the last couple months. He was a bit cocky in public, but to be honest, after that night, I will allow his cockiness to slide (just a little). He was sweet, tender and not at all what I expected. Then came the after shock. We had been texting … ok, it was starting to become mini-sexts, when I got hit by the bomb: “Nah, you should suck my [trouser snake] tho ;).”
Excuse me? Nobody tells me what to do, or talks to me in such a vulgar manner. So I did what every self-respecting feminist would have done – I slapped him. It was only later on when I was sitting with my friends, high on excitement from the fact that I had actually slapped him (and pretty hard might I add) that my friend asked to see the text. She looked up slowly, while saying my name with a slight wince … “You made a mistake,” she said. According to her, and later on him, too, that little emoticon changed the whole meaning of the text into a proposition that we should hang out again this weekend.
This made me furious. One emoticon changed everything from what should have been sleazy to a message that was supposed to make me swoon. Because we women analyze everything in texts, boys have been influenced by this and actually changed to suit us. In the beginning, I used to let my friends text for me, as they knew how to respond “correctly,” in the “American way.” Not anymore; I’ve decided that I’m not going to keep hiding behind the cool, mature, flirtatious persona my friends create for me, since it certainly juxtaposes with the real me. I miss real conversations, with real laughter and real winking faces. At this rate, I’m better off chatting with Siri.
– Sara Al Mehairi can be reached at [email protected]
