avevale_intelligencer

Is anyone else as irritated by this as I am?

If there is one thing in the world that's guaranteed to make me lose my temper (and there are in fact far too many...), it's being blown off in this kind of way. Similar in tone, and equally irritating, is "mm'kay?" It's arrogant, it's patronising, it's rude and it's not something I would ever do.

In fairness, I have mostly encountered these unpleasantnesses in posts where people are addressing complaints to people who won't be reading them anyway, and it's probably supposed to be funny. And a lot of the people addressed deserve far worse than to be blown off in a rude and patronising manner. I don't dispute that.

But the verbal zing detracts from the communication. If you say something to someone in a rude way they will focus on the rudeness and not on the substance of the communication, and the stupider they are the more true this is. This is the meaning behind the old chestnut "if you can't say something nice don't say anything at all." Truly, if you can't say what needs to be said in a nice way you might as well not say anything at all, because the person addressed has just forgotten every word in his or her fury at being insulted.

Communication is hard enough without putting deliberate obstacles in the way.

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Long, Long Ago ... back when telexes were the norm for intercontinental communications ... I remember being taught that telegraphese was OK for use in telexes because longer and more 'words' cost more to send. But you should not use telegraphese in an ordinary letter.

Then when e-mail became more common, most of the style columns for such things said you should use the same language in an e-mail as in an ordinary letter, as it was simply the same sort of communication but sent electronically. And this is something I've (usually) endeavoured to do.

Alas, text messages on phones have spoilt all that. Many people now communicate by text (sorry, should that be txt?) and a lot of them think that that is the *correct* way to write! They're far too fond of saving time/space/bandwidth/whatever to even think of how to express themselves in full. Txtspk in text messages - fine. In other communications? No, thank you.

I don't feel particularly insulted by it, but I do feel aggrieved. That's my tax money, dammit, that's being spent (or not) on teaching people the basic principles of the English language. And if I ever felt particularly aggrieved/insulted by such things being addressed to me, I'd probably have no hesitation in answering: "Sorry, I don't think I understand that. What do you mean?"

This particular thing isn't just txtspk, though it uses elements thereof. It's the equivalent of someone ending a conversation with you by simply starting to do something else, as if you've just vanished and are of no further importance. It is a deliberate snub.

When used *seriously*, yes. It's actually a text rendering of rushing to put the phone down on somebody before they can get in a word of objection. It signals "I have spoken, I have got the last word in, and I am not interested in listening to any response you may wish to make."

As I stylistic trick in a "getting it off your chest" rant that the person being addressed will never get to see anyway, I'm perfectly happy with it. And that's usually the context where I see it, anyway. But used in actually two-way communication? NO!!

Thank you; this thought is appropriate, and well said.

Communication is hard enough without putting deliberate obstacles in the way.

Amen. This one, too. Especially this one.

I wasn't even aware of this pseudo-word, looks like Polish or Gibberish, or...?

Faced with it, I would be inclined to reply with something like 'blivitz' or 'asparagus-tetani-scrotum'.

I'd never seen it before, but googling confirms my parsing of it as "Ok, thanks, bye".

By the way, there's an email published in the new issue of DWM (Issue 358, coverdated 20th July, hit my doormat this morning) from Alys Hayes, which I think you'll enjoy.

Aha. Don't suppose they printed any of mine...no, thought not.

Too soon. This issue would already have been on its way to the printers when you made your post here on LJ. Keep a look out next month.

Update: Rebecca Levene(*)'s review of "The Long Game" should meet with your approval also.

*(Yep, she who once edited the New Adventures.)

I never thought of it that way, but I can see how people would use it as a "I'm ending the conversation here because I want to cut you off and don't consider you important enough to continue the conversation with."

It bothers me because it's mangling of regular English.

But you're right. If you insult someone it is going to generate a response to the insult rather than whatever point was trying to be made inside the insult.

Having never seen a 'kthxbye' (I had to read the comments to find out what it was supposed to be, I thought something was missing from your post!) it doesn't offend me at all. If I saw it I would probably treat it as other TXTSPK or 1337 5P33K and mostly ignore it. I've never seen mm'kay as either arrogant or patronising, it's simply how some people speak.

The long form "OK, thanks, bye" implies to me that the person is in a hurry to (probably) apply whatever I have advised them to do. I don't get any more offended than I do when I'm on the phone and the other person says "I must cut this short" or whatever.

Your last point, that rudeness causes the rudeness itself to be noticed rather than any real points being made, is definitely true. On Usenet it tends to get the person using it put into killfiles so that they aren't seen again. I can think of several examples recently, where I'm just not interested in what they say because their 'arguments' equate to "su madre" (i.e. ad hominem attacks).

kthxbye

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You are not alone!

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