You kids better be able to draw.

I'm 31. Omo I and Omo II were my high school classmates. I'm old enough to tell you how the universe was formed, but unfortunately too old to remember. I've had an Internet presence since driving across town with an envelope was faster than downloading a full-screen picture on a $600 modem. People used software named after a muppet to download girly pictures, long before the World Wide Web existed, and this is what hot graphics looked like:

Like today's kids, I was an Internet child, except back then actually understanding it was necessary in order to get anything done. As far as the Internet goes, I'm 'old-school' which means I've seen all the fads like 'AoL SpAeK!!!111eleven', 'l33t 5p34k', SMS shorthand like 'c u l8r' etc.

I've read all kinds of online bastardisations of language, but none of that prepared me for the sort of thing that's becoming common these days. While poking around YouTube, I found this comment posted by an 18 year old Australian girl:

i dont no why nobdoy likes her maybe because she is anoyning or maybe because she is weared she dont no how to act i dont no i think she is ugly cheerz

While I hate when SMS-speak passes through a full-size keyboard, there's still something remotely passable about shorthand... even if it is repugnant. What's got my undies in a bunch today though has nothing to do with shorthand, it has to do with a complete disregard for the language. This is a girl who is about to finish her last year of high school. How did she even get to her last year of high school? Here's something from her profile:

hey every one ma name is Jazmen am so into modeling and singing am perfect from many ways and who ever think am not they just crazy . love my friends an dlove my family any other i may not

am so into movies and music so far if u like to meet me or chat to me just msg me ok caio

It's not entirely her fault. What kind of education system allows this girl to progress, and what hope did she have when her parents can't even spell her name properly? This is altogether too many pet-peeves rolled into one illiterate young woman who thinks her supposed good looks and 'fuck you if you don't like it' attitude are enough to survive on.

She's 18 for crying out loud, not 8. This girl probably already has a licence to operate deadly machinery, but can't string a sentence together. She's no doubt getting as much dick as she can, but probably can't even spell 'pregnancy'. She'd do well to read a book (written by someone she might even recognise) called Beauty Fades, Dumb is Forever.

I caught myself thinking about how limited her future would be, but then I realised the most depressing thing of all; she's not the minority. She'll find a passable job which may even involve having to write something, at a company staffed almost entirely by 'the illiterati'. Her boss will accept that sort of brain-dead drivel because that will be the baseline of the day. In fact, we're fast heading toward the time when literate people will have a glass ceiling placed above them by their degree-holding yet illiterate bosses who think those who speak and write properly are just elitist snobs.

The Internet hasn't made written communication any less important than it was 100 years ago - if anything it's more important than ever, given that people are instant-messaging their neighbours. Despite this, learning to read today involves not only developing a vocabulary, but also developing the skill to decipher the mess some idiots make of the words they try to use. If nobody can spell, then everyone's spelling differently, which means they're relying on their dubious intelligence to make any bloody sense of what's being said!

Eventually the written word will become useless as people misspell words which don't exist, but are nevertheless in use, like the one in my previous post. The Internet can't decide if it's 'hizzy' or 'heezy' when in reality it's neither!

All I can hope for is that by the time the written word is forgotten, at least kids have learned to draw. Perhaps the few of us left who still enjoy learning things should just write some cave drawing software for them to illegally download and install on their mobile phones.