Yesterday I found someone who says “question mark” after every question and has apparently forgotten how to inflect their voice to express tone. It was horrifying, but I realized I’m not that different. I immediately think “cringe” or “based” at many things. Even when I’m not terminally online everything I hear gets put on a meme template by my brain. I’m having trouble expressing tone/emotion in writing without visual indicators like emojis or “/s.” I know I’m not alone, what do we do?
When I hear someone say “question mark”, it’s usually in a condescending or smug way of talking. Usually accompanied with an over the top tone. It’s annoying and down right insulting, but I’ve rarely found it said that way so that’s fortunate.
But this? This better be some edge case because that is down right terrifying. Still I don’t know enough about that person to know whether the absolutely monotone voice is a symptom of being terminally online or something else entirely. I hope for the latter, because just the thought of such an extreme case is making me doubtful, skeptical and well… terrified just for thinking it possibly being true.
Can’t relate directly, but I do have thoughts in my head about a someone I’m talking to. Like thinking the person might be an utter idiot, someone well intentioned and salvageable, or someone who knows what they are talking about. But I don’t shorthand it to “based” or “cringe”. As long as those words stay in your head, I don’t think they are wrong to have there. Just don’t use them in public unless you want someone to wince.
Maybe that’s not so bad. As long as you don’t try and articulate yourself purely in memes or try to communicate your thoughts in them, then they could help you with simplifying thoughts. Buuut, they might also influence how you think about the other person subconsciously and be detrimental when talking about more complicated stuff. But I don’t know, I’m just spouting bullshit of the top of my head since I don’t do this and don’t know how it could influence thinking.
This is a non issue, text is a very sterile form of conversation as it does not convey any sort of emotion you want to convey through it by itself. That’s why emoji exist and why something like “/s” was invented, back in my day™ pEoPlE uSeD tO wRiTe LiKe tHiS to convey mockery or sarcasm.
Here you go, a video by Jan Misali about “/hj”: “the /hj tone indicator is worse than useless”
To be clear, I don’t mean it all in engaging with others. I’ve never heard the word used in an insulting way, just in the way people ask Siri to send messages with. It is scary. I do deconstruct what people say and think of them as fools sometimes, but usually I just mean based or cringe as in “I like or don’t like that thing/aspect.”
I don’t think the meme thing is very helpful, considering there are better ways I can and do think, and whatever I come up with isn’t that funny.
I think there is a bit of a limit on short form text, but people seem to have been able to express emotion better in the past idk. Also, that video keeps showing up in my recommended.