Internet slang is something that everyone from the 21st century is familiar with, as it has become a key component of all different kinds of social media. The popularity of this new kind of language is extremely varied among different parts of society, but regardless of how much you like internet slang, it is undoubtedly a major part of the internet as we know it today. Unless you live under a rock like Patrick Star from Spongebob Squarepants, then it is very likely that you have come across internet slang in some form or another. 

In fact this slang has become such a big hit that there is even a website that is solely dedicated to defining and translating internet slang terms. However is it worth it? I believe that the use of internet slang is completely fucking pointless, and provides absolutely no benefits what-so-ever.

So a lot of you out there are probably wondering why exactly I disapprove of internet slang, and the answer is very simple… it makes literally everything you say sound completely and utterly dumb! This is the reason why the majority of essays and articles tend not to use internet slang, due to the intellectual limitations that these phrases or “fragments” of speech possess. I highly doubt that anyone has ever read a text message or tweet, and then thought “wow they made an excellent and educated point”. You can use all the fancy words you want, but as soon as you throw in “LOL” or “YOLO”, all that insightfulness completely goes down the drain.

Despite my strong dislike for internet slang, I have to admit that there are a few instances where using slang makes sense. An article in The New York Times pointed out one of these instances when they stated that “twitter users, limited to 140 characters, must be brief when expressing feelings”. This is very true, therefore I do not expect people on twitter to write full and intricate sentences, but that does not mean that they need to fill their entire tweets with shortened words or acronyms. Another good point that was mentioned in that very same article is from Aryn Kyle who said “we talk to each other in fragments because of how short on time we are now”. I know that I am in fact a very busy person, and there are a lot of times throughout my day where I need to communicate with someone and don’t have very much time to do it in. However, instead of resorting to talking as a three year old would, I instead take the time to call up the person, which provides much more benefits than texting or instant messaging ever would. This “old-school” tactic prevents me from sounding like a high school dropout, and is in fact much faster than messaging someone and having to wait for them to reply back to you. So I can assure you that for every instance where you think that using internet slang is justified, there is always another far less ridiculous alternative.

The use of internet slang online is bad enough, but something that is even worse is when that same slang gets brought into the real world. I can’t think of anything more irritating than when someone is talking to me in person and says something like “brb”. Are you honestly telling me that your time is too valuable to take the extra second to convert that stupid acronym into the full (and more intelligent) be right back? If so, then you better be the god damn King of Britain! It’s not just slang acronyms that irritate me either, even the general shortening of names or places is enough to make me want to punch you in the face.

 

I cannot count the number of times where I have heard my friends refer to the popular photo sharing site Instagram as “Insta”. This seems utterly ridiculous to me, because I fail to understand any benefit that this could serve. Shortening the name saves you literally less than a second of your life, and if anything, it may even cost you time due to your friends asking you what the hell “Insta” is, or if you’ve just had a stroke of some sort. Using this kind of language in real life situations just baffles me, and I don’t believe that there will ever be a time where I will learn to accept this.

So as you can clearly see, the use of internet slang (whether online or in real life) is completely unnecessary, and should be kept to a minimum, if not completely removed from society. I fail to see any true benefit in it’s existence, and I hope that some day soon the rest of the world will join me in this revelation. Until then, the best I can do is continue to boycott the use of this ridiculous language, and let anyone who regularly uses it that they are in fact a true and utter idiot.