Thursday, November 03, 2005

I was like oh my god

I have been beset by phone calls at all hours of the day and night from the Cornwalls. I am really finding my world renowned patience being stretched. “Cams, ducky”, I tell her, not for the 12th time, “this is one of the few occasions where you will be in the position of dining with someone thicker than you. Take advantage of it. Even if Chaz starts chatting to the broccoli, it is a dead cert that President Fuckwit will do something even more bizarre. Relax and do what the hell you like. Put on your silly voice and pretend to be an upper class thicko.”

I wonder if my loyal readers can provide me with some information.

What is the style of speech affected by a substantial number of young ladies between the ages of 12 and 30 that makes everything that they say sound as if they are complaining? It seems to be gaining in popularity, and accompanied by an insistence to communicate every detail about everything, no matter how bollock-numbingly boring.

What is the name for those parts of speech that superfluously qualify verbs, as in “phone up”, “print out”, “fill out/ fill in/ fill up a form”?

8 comments:

Betty said...

"What is the style of speech affected by a substantial number of young ladies between the ages of 12 and 30 that makes everything that they say sound as if they are complaining?"

I don't know what it's called, but I think it may have something to do with the fact that puberty now lasts for 18 years, due to something hormonal in the water supply.

Anonymous said...

This is a phenomenon best seen on the Internet than anywhere else. The worst group appears to be the 11-14 age range. Sadly, with the advent of newer technologies such as the weblog, thier desire to say absolutely everything as if it was the most important thing in the world and as if everyone else cared has only grown.

Somehow these blogs end up being the most popular, possibly due to the other pre-teen girls who think they are "sharing their misery." If you feel you must read one of these, just click on any of the "Popular Blogs" on the Bravejournal main page. There's a 98% chance you'll get one.

Here's how a typical entry goes:

"Nothing happened today. Just thought you should know. Everyone hates me."

Here's the expanded version of an age 13-ish entry:

OMG WTF LOLz BBQ! Nothing happened today. I went to school and it was boring. After school, I went to track practice and I stepped in a puddle. It was wet! Later on, my coach yelled at me just because I stopped in the middle of a race to talk to my friend. I don't think he has a crush on me after all.

I went home and my parents asked me how my day was. WHY DO THEY HATE ME SO MUCH!!1!!!? I sat in my room and cried for three hours while listening to N'Sync. That's as close as I can get to them until I marry them all. OMG!

~~~~~The End~~~~~~

(Countless parade of unnecessary symbols and pictures)

On a side note, these are the most hated kinds of people in the nerd world. My roommate is a Computer Science major and he thinks that "OMG!" is the funniest thing in the universe. Really.

And as long as this comment was, I could really go on for quite a while longer on this topic.

tvmkiwnx- What you find you have typed after repeatedly banging your head against your keyboard after reading a blog of the type mentioned above.

Geoff said...

I was going to say it was a purely Hampshire phenomenon but it looks like it's moved to the USA.

Mark Gamon said...

The 'oh my god' thing started with Janice in Friends. It was funny at the time.

So that part at least can be blamed on the Americans. However the prefix 'iwaslike' appears to be a uniquely British invention.

What the hell. It's our language. We can do what we like with it.

The good news is that the really crap usages all die out in due course. Unless you know any people who still say 'hep jive, daddy-o'.

Useful words and phrases, on the other hand, tend to stick with us.

God I'm sounding scholarly. Must be pre-xmas curmudgeonliness. Which I suspect is a word I just made up. We'll see if it sticks...

Vicus Scurra said...

Thank you for your words of wisdom, Mr Gamon. Of course these usages will die out. No need to worry.
Far out, too much, outasight.

Mark Gamon said...

Hey man. I wish I was tripping...

Vicus Scurra said...

No way, man, I dropped some acid at that Hendrix concert last night, and I had this really weird trip where the whole world was linked up by personal computers and telephone lines, and any bloody idiot could write what they wanted for the whole world to read.
Freaked out, man.

Mark Gamon said...

Wow, maan. What if you could like get in a time machine and go forward and time and it'd all be true man. Like that would be so trippy...

xqsmljt. Somehow I can't bring myself to repeat the meaning of this word. Not in polite company, anyway.

(whatcha mean, it's only Vicus's blog?)