Wednesday, August 06, 2003

“Room 101”

An occasional series on things that get right up my bottom.

No.2: “I h8 txting”

It seemed a good idea at the time. Mobile phone calls are expensive, so why not devise a cheap alternative? Some bright spark came up with SMS messaging, a facility where a customer could send a short text message to another for a nominal charge. One hundred and sixty characters, that should be enough for anybody.

Now, in general, I don’t have much of a problem with mobile phones. I’ve got one and use it as, well, a phone. I bought twenty pounds worth of credit with the thing eighteen months ago, and I’ve still got it. Some people, however, are seriously contemplating having their phones grafted to the side of their head, and their salaries paid straight into Vodafone’s accounts department. I was the boy who had 2p in his pocket “just in case” I needed to use a phonebox in an emergency. I had the same coin for six years, and finally blew it on Dial-a-disc, which turned out to be worse than Tony Blackburn’s Junior Choice.

Mobile phones are turning us into a nation of mumbling idiots with a set of stock phrases such as “Hi! I’m on a train!” (said at the top of your voice); while those flash bastards with hands-free kits who walk around shopping malls talking to themselves leaving those of us holding genuine interior dialogues looking sane by comparison.

But txting! It’s murdering the English language. Who, in the name of Satan, has stln all the bstrd vowels? Maybe I’m just getting old, but it’s just a load of bllcks to me. And when it starts appearing on TV, in magazines, on websites, I jst wnt to drg those rspnsibl out into the street and hav a gr8 time kickng some bldy sense into their heads. And don’t even get me started on Sk8tr Boi. Even "Vodafone" is spelled wrong.

Give us a few years, and we’ll have evolved into a nation of quarter-wits with hugely developed thumbs and an inability to use vowels that’ll make the Welsh look normal.

Txt Mssgng: a ld of bstrd crp. CUL8r!

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