The Language Of..

What
is
fascinating
thing
on
the
web? Without a shout of a doubt the
acebook!!!!!








To get things started here, most of you all out there write more enthusiastically on Facebook than actually you are in real life, right? If u see something remotely funny u might say “HAHAHAHA,” when really there is no expression on your face. Some of you spend one or ‘maybe three or maybe six hours a day’ on Facebook. You get updates and messages to your phone during school and business day, when you’re not on raya holiday hanging out on Facebook the way people in a quaint and distant era might have hang out at pool.

In the dark, medieval days before the internet, teenagers were forced to scribble their strategies experiments in self-hood in buku conteng,journal and notebooks, or to express themselves through their clothes. The high drama was the same but in media available were inferior. How amazing it is to be able to tell your 1000 something ‘closest’ friends, “guess who I saw at mid? I coughed blood and it was awkward!!!! Or "im so bored”.

Facebook gives exhibitionism, the pure theater of those days, a whole other level of stage. So it’s not life imitating art or art imitating life, but the two were merging inexorably. But one fictional argot of Facebook for teenagers would be emphatic speech. Their pages are peppered with ‘Okkayy’, “HAHAHAHAHA” and “OMG!!!!”Everything is louder and capitalized. This is the way of dramatizing or raising the stakes on even the most inane or banal exchange. You don’t just look cute. You look sooooooooooo cute!!!!!

One of the other great adolescent poses of Facebook is "can’t wait for the world to end,” you might add “lol” or you might say “Hey you are at Malaysia and I’m in England, and I just want to say I miss you,hahahaha,’’ to make clear that you are not really looking forward to anything or expressing an actual emotion in a way that might be overly earnest or embarrassing.

Some even seem to like to parody the Facebook norms even as they embrace them. When they write ‘omg’, they are not ironically commenting on the use of ‘omg’. When other people say ‘omg’ they are seriously saying ‘oh my god!’.It should be said that adults are not necessarily more themselves on facebook.

They are simply less natural or conversant when they are “fictionalize”.Somewhere in the gap between status posting and the person in their room at night is life itself. So fiction is the right response to make about who we are in this dangerously consuming media. Somehow Facebook is the novel that we all are writing.