These are some posts I’ve cribbed from a Facebook page. Just wondering what you would think about the person writing them:
just chillin in tha room listenin 2 sum music gettin ready 2 leave tha crib i mite meet my bro sumwhere idk yet…im missin my niece’s and my nephew so much but my bro mite b bk in town but idk wat he is goin 2 do just yet…lovin god,fam,and also tha homies…livin my lyfe 2 tha fullest ya dig…lata fb fam,and homies…
just chillin just got bk home 4rm seein my grandma and my sis fam…now im just in my room doin nuthin bout 2 take these dogs bk outside cuz they just got done eatin other dat im goin 2 b in tha livin room while my phone is on charge cuz my mins aint free til 9 and dat sucks…but its all gud…lovin god,fam,and tha homies…
just chillin in my room watchin tv…got sumthin on my mind but i kno one thang it wont change how i feel i just need 2 think thangs threw b4 i do anythin…anyways loving god,fam,and of corse my homies…
WENT AND PAID MY COMPUTER BILL AND ITS BK UP AND RUNNING AGAIN WAT A GUD FEELIN CUZ I HAVE NUTHIN ELSE 2 DO BUT B ON HERE LOL…BUT ANYWAYS I JUST GOT BK 2 THA CRIB AND NOW IM CHILLIN AND DATS BOUT IT…IM SO LOVIN MY LYFE,GOD,FAMILY,AND THA HOMIES…
U CANT MAKE NO1 LOVE U IF THEY DONT LOVE U NOW THAT MEANS THEY WILL NEVA LOVE U NO MATTA HOW HARD U TRY THEY STILL AINT GOIN 2 GET IT CUZ 2 THEM ITS NOT GUD ENOUGH 4 THEM…HOW MUCH CAN U TAKE TIL U CANT TAKE NO MORE AND THEN U TELL URSELF ITS NOT WROTH GOIN THREW THIS ANYMORE AND ITS BOUT TIME I GIVE UP CUZ THEY WILL NEVA UNDERSTAND IT…
OK, I guess I wasn’t clear: Where I was really coming from was to me this seemed like a combination of text-, leet-, and hood-speak, with a hefty dose of borderline illiteracy. But. . . for all I knew, this was common, as I’m pretty out of touch with “the latest thing.”
And while I didn’t really mean to imply “Guess what the person looks like,” the descriptions are pretty close.
Seriously, my brother (white, early 20s) posts Facebook updates that look really similar to that, minus the all-caps stuff. I agree that it’s a weird mix of styles, but it’s fairly common on Facebook among, um, certain groups of people.
To me, all but the last one were completely readable and made perfect sense. While it’s not a high literary form, I estimate it saves time to type. It makes me suspect the poster’s intelligence, but I know some people who post like that from time to time and are eminently smart. As for the demographics of the post in question, in my perhaps racist mind it conjures up the image of a black teenager, but in my actual experience young and male are the only descriptors that are nigh-universally true.