Why are primitive cultures so much more intelligent than those born in the era of rapidly-accessible information?
I walked in on my roommate watching one of her period piece movies (as ya do) the other day and caught a few lines from Jane Eyre. For those of you who, FOR WHATEVER REASON, aren't into films set in 18th century England... well, that's what it is. There ya go.
The line I heard was spoken by a character meant to be a low-class servant and it went something like this,
"I, for one, am never quite certain whether what he says is in earnest or in jest."
Quickly, I put my 21st century brain to work and translated it into something people in this day and age would understand,
"I never know if he's fuckin' with me or not."
I'm fairly confident that THAT alone is the reason anyone could dislike period pieces. The language is too complex and the syntax is too convoluted. I, personally, love the way they spoke back then but goddamn does it make Charles Dickens books a pain in the ass to read through.
So how is it that, when we have almost all the information we could ever need at our fingertips (quite literally, too *clickityclickitykeyboardnoises*) we type and speak like utter retards all the time? Once upon a time, a low-class governess was expected to have an understanding of several languages, a musical instrument or two, and the penmanship of a typewriter. Now you can get a 6 figure marketing job off of Craigslist with nothing but a high school diploma (the requirements of which would make Jane Austen roll over in her grave) and some other Mickey Mouse bullshit like, "an enthusiastic attitude." No joke, the standards for this generation have dropped so low, I'll probably be running Apple by next year on account of my extensive knowledge of... whiskey and Germanic folklore.
This newfangled "chatspeak" that all these whippersnappers are spouting these days is becoming more commonplace than actual, proper English. And, in all seriousness, that terrifies me. Are they going to start teaching this nonsense in schools?
" 'Naw dawg' is used when disagreeing with someone else's viewpoint or to dispute an accusation. A 'bro' is an arrogant person, usually male, who wears checkered shorts and speaks in grunts, much akin to that of the common gorilla. 'Tool' is also a standard titl-- Excuse me, Jimmy! What the SHIT do you think you're doing? What are these? Is that a proper use of the word 'they're?!' So help me, I will call your parents back here if I catch you so much as using proper punctuation."
That's where we're headed. And it's all our faults, admit it. All those times you wrote "gonna" in your essays, all those "like whatever"s that spewed from your gaping maw while you gazed doey-eyed at a book you were assigned to read... it's all led to this moment. This day... where damn near no one understands why the phrase "could care less" does not actually make sense because it's so commonly used that it's become accepted as the norm.
What exactly happened that made being uneducated the ultimate goal in modern social hierarchies? When did, "lol i dont read buks" become something that was ok to admit? I remember being teased through school because I knew more than a good portion of my classmates (except in math; as far as anyone is concerned, that entire chapter of my life did not happen and you can't prove otherwise) and actually enjoyed reading. Speaking clearly and understanding things like... basic history and science... isn't physically strenuous. If anything, deciphering the code I see some people type on a regular basis is beyond the manpower of most cryptographers on account of how stressful and abrasive it is simply to look at, let alone understand.
I, for one, do not welcome our new textspeak overlords.
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