Wednesday, January 27, 2021

Tumblr Users Explain Older Generations' Confusing Texts


This enlightening Tumblr thread shines light on the glaring differences that can arise in a texting conversation between a millennial and a boomer or GenXer. Basically, it boils down to the millennials (or younger generations in general) trying to text like they think they'd sound in real life, while the boomers are apt to text more formally and technically correct regardless of how it'd sound when read out loud. 

These different approaches definitely contribute toward some avoidable misinterpretations between folks. What you might've viewed as a passive aggressive text from a parent was actually just them trying to space out their words more. Weird. 

1.

Font - averagefairy old people really need to leam how to text accurately to the mood they're trying to represent like my boss texted me wondering when my semester is over so she can start scheduling me more hours and i was like my finals are done the 15th! And she texts back "Yay for you.." how the fuck am i supposed to interpret that besides passive aggressive runawaymarbles Someone needs to do a linguistic study on people over 50 and how they use the ellipsis, It's FASCINATING. I never know t

2.

Font - feynites I actually thought for a long time that texting just made my mother cranky. But then I watched my sister send her a funny text, and my mother was laughing her ass off. But her actual texted response? "На right." Like, she had actual goddamn tears in her eyes, and that was what she considered an appropriate reply to the joke.l just marvelled for a minute like what the actual hell?' and eventually asked my mom a few questions. I didn't want to make her feel defensive or self-consci

3.

Font - Turns out that she's using the ellipsis the same way I would use a dash, and also to create 'more space between words' because it 'just looks better to her'. Also, that I tend to perceive an ellipsis as an innate 'downswing', sort of like the opposite of the upswing you get when you ask a question, but she doesn't. And that she never uses exclamation marks, because all her teachers basically drilled it into her that exclamation marks were horrible things that made you sound stupid and/or

4.

Font - "Yay. That sounds great... where are we meeting?" And when I look at both of those texts, mine reads like 'happy/approval' to my eye, whereas my mother's looks flat. Positive phrasing delivered in a completely flat tone of voice is almost always sarcastic when spoken aloud, so written down, it looks sarcastic or passive-aggressive. On the reverse, my mother thinks my texts look, in her words, 'ditzy' and 'loud. She actually expressed confusion, because she knows I write and she thinks tha

5.

Font - So whereas people around my age or younger tend to text like we're scripting our own dialogue and need to convey the right intonations, my mom writes her texts like she's expecting her Eighth grade English teacher to come and mark them in red pen. She has learned that proper punctuation and mistakes are more acceptable, but when she considers putting effort into how she's writing, it's always the lines of making it more formal or technically correct, and not along the lines of 'how would

6.

Font - send-borbs • 12h huh yeah I kinda picked up on this with my dad, his texts always sound very blunt and annoyed, but it's because he's not good at typing on phones so he makes them as short and simple as possible with little to no punctuation so I might send 'heya - would you mind picking me up from the shops?' and he would reply something like 'what time' or 'wait at the ramp' or 'can't right now' the bluntness feels like annoyance but he'll usually call me soon after to get or give more

7.

Font - TransguyJayJay • 11h Yeah, that what my mom does. Like a third of my texts from her are exactly this phrase: "Please come walk the dog...". Or, if shes telling me something, like say, I have a dentist appointment tomorrow, she does it like this: "You have a dentist appointment tomorrow.." like it sounds vaguely threatening, and I think it's kinda funny tbh Reply 51 3 ...

8. And here we go with the official confirmation.

Font - Rhamona_Q • 6h I want to thank whoever wrote this because yes, it is so completely true. I'm a GenXer, and the way we were taught English grammar back in the 1970's and 1980's was much more formal than how it seems to be taught now, if my nieces and nephews' homework assignments are any indication. The way we were trained in sentence structure was definitely more rigid and we had rules and expectations for what we put down on paper.

9.

Font - Consider that when we were growing up, there was no email. There was no texting capacity on phones. If you wanted to communicate or share an opinion with anyone that you didn't actually see face to face on a regular basis, your options were to make a phone call, or write a letter. A letter to a company describing your happiness or unhappiness with their product. A letter to the editor of the newspaper (remember, no world wide web yet) to comment on an article from a few days ago. A letter

10.

Font - In this format, ellipsis only meant a pause, or as a "placeholder" in a sentence where what would go there is implied, so you don't need to say it again. It wasn't meant as sinister, unless the subject matter itself was of a dark nature, I guess? When cell phones and T9 texting began to be a thing, I feel like that's when the biggest shift began. Shortcuts were suddenly acceptable. A whole new language of acronyms began to form. Kids learned this new way of communicating along with the ol

11.

Font - Later on with smartphones and emojis being another whole language of its own, we really have to make efforts to not be left behind. It's like, if all your life you spoke Spanish, and suddenly some people started sprinkling Dutch into the conversations. You get that it relates to the discussion, but you're missing the context for why it's relevant. So then, we try to sprinkle in some emojis, in a way that makes sense to our brains, not realizing that there's a whole other subtext that we'r

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