Internet slang: the dummening of our culture -by Siren

Internet slang. Geez. Who made this up? It's like handicapped typing. It's like another language. It's dreadfully annoying to people who can actually type out entire words and phrases without the help of some kind of set code made up by some teenage pseudo-internet guru chewing pink bubblegum. The word "you" is just entirely too long. So how can we shorten it? I just don't get it. How much time does one actually save by doing this? Assuming you type more than six words a minute, not much .

Internet slang is also really hard to read. I once took a typography class, and the instructor was always squinting at peoples' projects and saying "It doesn't read well." That, my friends, sums up this whole internet slang thing. I can read "Does anyone want to chat?" much easier than I can read "NE1 want 2 chat?"...and chances are, I'll ignore someone who chose the latter way to type a sentence, being that I assume the entire "conversation" will be one big guessing game after another. No, it's not that hard to figure it out, but why in hell should you have to RE-read a simple sentence in order to understand what it means? Is this slang thing some exlusive club for people who can't type properly? Is that why we weren't briefed on it?

Now I don't know about you, but when i see "IMHO," I read it as a word (or words). "I'm ho." Just type it out, for god's sake. "In my humble opinion." See! I just did it. It took less than two seconds. We would really sacrifice legibility and language skills to save 1.7 seconds? Apparently so. What about "rotflmfao"...that says "rot-phlegm-fow"...right? That's what i see. And let's talk about "LOL" for a minute. I find it extremely hard to believe that people are actually laughing out loud every single time they type this. I've seen people type "LOL" after every sentence. So was he/she sitting at his computer, typing sentence after sentence and laughing out loud?...and if so, is his family making plans to have him commited? It's really nauseating when people type it after things that aren't in the least bit funny. "I have to go put some laundry in the dryer! LOL!" ...ha ha. You're quite the jokester. I cannot contain my laughter.

...I just don't get it.

As a rule, I've found that people who use these alternate spellings and various forms of internet slang (though there are always exceptions) tend to be people of the less-intelligent variety. Anyone who asks "how r u?" isn't gonna be able to use the word "colloquialism" in a sentence, and they sure as hell don't know they're a walking one. Sue me if I don't like cyber-conversing with people who are idiots.