I'm far from gen z, but I spent a lot of time communicating through chat in the past ~20 years, and I've gotta say, to me, most of this is not "Gen Z" stuff, but "chat native" stuff. It becomes pretty obvious pretty soon when somebody doesn't really know the (for lack of a better word) language of these small nuances and a bunch of others, like message length, timings, etc.
It's not done to be edgy, or to fit in, or anything like that. Its different tones in text. If the other party doesn't speak this language, then the communication becomes very literal, very formal. Kind of like how someone who is oblivious to social cues comes across in spoken conversations, only without the stigma, as its quite normal to not know this stuff. But it's much harder to 'feel' the other person.
I interact with a fair number of people who are either older Gen Z, or younger Millennials. They don't follow half of the rules in the blog post (example: you become un-dateable if you don't use lots of emojis on dating apps... seriously?). Of the rest, many have been around for decades (example: imperfect capitalization and punctuation does, in fact, imply informality, always has).
If you read someone's text and then also read their Instagram story and you still haven't replied, that's fine. If anything it's a bit of a power move. But really it's just what ends up happening when you're busy and don't have time to dick around on social media and overthink shit.
The article smacks of a mild anxiety disorder which is a common affliction of youth (sadly increasingly these days it's not so mild). The author would do well to ignore other people's petty shit and spend the next decade preoccupied with kicking ass at whatever he's best at.
Yeah, much of these (or variations) applied to online live chat or async forums in the '90s. Though different venues had different conventions.
And rules like in the article would all be easy to remember. What's not in the article is whether/what skills you'll need to develop to process all this information and noise.
For example, I remember seeing a busy chat room for the first time in the mid-'90s, and there was so much people talking, and it was scrolling seemingly too fast to read. (Bonus: I was on a then-vintage green CRT terminal, HP 2392A, at that moment, so incomprehensible scrolling of symbols was not entirely unlike the Matrix visual.)
But after some experience with the chat, it was no longer overwhelming. I could glance at the scrollage and have a sense of who was talking, what was being discussed, and possibly some meta of what was going on. And, for incoming messages, I could be tracking and selectively focusing among the often multiple concurrent threads of conversation.
I suppose skills a bit analogous to that might include how to manage the many different online services today you have to be on today, applying critical processing to advertising/engagement feed algorithms, juggling all this inefficient stuff with more real-life things, etc.
All the rules around instagram likes and reposting, the rules around “k”, that “:)” is passive aggressive etc. A lot of that feels juvenile which makes sense if it’s a gen z post. I’d guess it’ll stop once out of teens and early to mid twenties.
I think when people are more secure/confident they stop doing as much meta analysis of this kind.
Pretty strongly disagree with this. I consider myself "chat native". Talking to people on the internet via text has been my primary method of interpersonal communication to people outside my family for 20 years now, from around when I was in middle school. I'm as "chat native" as you come and a lot of this has nothing to do with "chat native" anything.
The full stop thing has been around since IRC networks, or I imagine any quick-response short message platform. No one ever explicitly explains it or notes it, you just pick up on it.
Same with the difference colours of laughter "lol, rofl, haha, hahaha, lmao, ha." They're all just laughing but I bet you had different ideas about how each of them feel. This happens with language at large, synonymous words pick up nuanced differences so that we can express ourselves better, they aren't codified they just spread naturally.
I think for full stops, it's like the difference between familiar language and polite language. If you are too polite with a close friend you give off the impression that you're not close enough for casual language, which can be insulting.
> I think for full stops, it's like the difference between familiar language and polite language. If you are too polite with a close friend you give off the impression that you're not close enough for casual language, which can be insulting.
But it's also great for dry humor over text. Like when you switch to corporate-speak as a joke between friends:
A: "Looks like our main factory just blew up"
B: "Yes. Given the prevailing macroeconomic conditions, I felt that downsizing that factory was critical to actioning the quarterly plan."
---
Or alternatively, when you're sending a flurry of messages and want to show that you're done with the thought:
I was a longtime user of IRC networks and never saw people care about conveying messages with a full stop or lack of it. That just never had any part of it.
> 9. Capitalizing the first letter in a sentence will reveal where you are
This one really surprises me, if someone contacted me without bothering to type a proper sentence I would just think they're an idiot. Everyone I know always starts a sentence with a capital letter, no matter the platform. They all know how to use the shift key.
This isn't even gate keeping, people use slang all the time, it is basic English. News, books, articles, tutorials, emails, teams, share point... Everything I read every day has proper capitalization.
I think you're being overly harsh on this when it comes to informal communication.
As others pointed out, capitalization is similar to white space, punctuation, and other tools that English has when it comes to informal communication.
Especially online, you can invoke a lot of imagery and thoughts and emotions by simply playing with the rules of English in a live-chat setting. Try to imagine in a chat the following sentence with different stylizations:
"The Customer is always right, so we need to work to correct this"
"thE CUsTomer iS aLWays RIght, So WE neEd To WoRK To cOrrECT thiS"
"the customer is always right, so we need to work to correct this :))))"
The first is quite formal and it's direct; perhaps it could be understood as sarcasm if someone knows you well, but it could also be taken at face value and quite seriously, or it could be taken as a throw-away statement.
The second indicates a mocking tone and maybe even resentment, taking the time to mimic a meme and also to purposefully make the sentence silly looking.
The third introduces the sarcastic smiley (I disagree with the article's interpretation, as I've always seen :))) to more represent desperation or exasperation)
With traditional rules of English, tone is difficult to convey with a single sentence and it's built with the surrounding text as a point of consideration to understand how to interpret a statement; with chat, this is far more difficult to communicate the emotion/intention as chats can be very fast and disconnected, and it's hard to follow the attitude and mood of a person to understand their intended messaging.
You could try to divorce the message from the emotions, which might lead to expediting some discussions, but it also leaves a lot of room for incorrect/wrong interpretations. Even if you divorce yourself from such concerns and try to be above it, your conversation partners might not approach it the same way.
The evolution of chat might be bastardizing the classic rules of English, but it's quite expressive and personally has made many conversations and relationships much easier with fewer misunderstandings.
This seems like a very effective way to dismiss people that don't share your background. Also, not speaking basic English does not make one an idiot, there are actually quite a few other languages in the world.
Gen Z here and I had to check my IMs and it’s always capitalised at the start regardless of if it was done automatically. Although I regularly don’t end messages with a . Unless it’s a long message. I certainly wouldn’t think it’s rude.
The one thing that was completely true though was the smile thing “good job :)” is extremely toxic.
Most of this list is just things people tend to do but wouldn’t notice if you didn’t.
typing without capitalization can help to create a more informal, somewhat playful tone. same goes for slight misspellings or abbrs instead of spelling out the full word. its just another way to add a small amount of “tone”.
capitalization conveys essentially no information in itself, so it would be a waste to continue mindlessly using it when it could be encoded with additional information. Part of what we are seeing with evolving norms is the fat being cut from written english. is our completely redundant capital chatacter set REALLY being used to its fullest extent right now?
An "idiot" does things without knowing or considering why. People choosing to break old capitalization rules to better communicate are a step above those who can't handle that the english they learned in grade school no longer exists.
You should probably spend more time on the internet, or be a bit more relaxed. Many people uncapitalize for stylistic effects, say to portray how you're uninterested or chill you are, which are very common young people signals for "I'm cool".
Other than that plenty of non idiots forget to capitalize a sentence.
My defense when I was younger was simply that I didn't even intend to type proper sentences for instant messaging -- I viewed it as a textual representation of speaking[1], not short-form prose.
(These days I aim for proper sentences also in instant messaging, acknowledging the asynchronous nature of it. But if I happen to catch my conversation partner active, I might switch to the more informal, "verbal" style.)
----
[1]: You may think you speak in proper sentences, but try to transcribe an audio recording literally some day. You might be surprised!
I recently noticed my habit of starting a message or note with a lower case letter. What I found amusing (and what led to me thinking about it) was that I always capitalise the start of the second and subsequent sentences. Also of note: I always capitalise the first person pronoun and often omit the ultimate punctuation
The other ones I kinda agree (with measure), but this one is awful. Then they ask why "is it so hard to get a job". Job market issues aside, don't come across as a dork.
I used to feel the same but I now had to teach two otherwise intelligent juniors that work communication is formal and sentences do start with a capital. So apparently it got lost at some point.
Both my Marroccan employees didn’t capitalize sentences, whereas they capitalized nouns, even in customer-facing apps. Does this concept exist in Arabic languages?
i've just taken the most basic of looks over my DMs in various platforms and i'd put it at 50% starting with caps, and some of those messages are off people i'd consider pretty clever
Every time some new generation starts to create its own identity, some proportion of the previous dominant generation reacts defensively by attacking it with wilful ignorance and disdain. It's a tragic way to age. Worse than a ponytail and a motorbike.
If you find yourself finding smug, try looking at an old Reddit rage comic/4chan greentext/usenet flamewar, depending on your age.
Conversely, don’t expect the previous generations to quit using capitalization and periods.
Your point is well taken, and thankfully I have neither a pony tail nor a motorcycle, but I am quite likely to observe 40 years of habit and driving in the guardrails of the language.
Or, ya know, don’t read shit into the message that isn’t there.
unfortunately every time a new generation starts to create its own identity they age to either throw away the baby with the bathwater or to repeat the same.mistakes of the previous generations.
My generation did it too.
Social progress is not linear growth but sinusoidal.
>The children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer rise when elders enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble up dainties at the table, cross their legs, and tyrannize their teachers.
> - Socrates, 400 B.C.
>Every time some new generation starts to create its own identity, some proportion of the previous dominant generation reacts defensively by attacking it with wilful ignorance and disdain. It's a tragic way to age. Worse than a diadema and a peneia.
> - the youth, 400 B.C.
---
>The children now love the internet; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love reddit in place of blog posts. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer use facebook while their uncles still do. They contradict their parents, text before company, gobble up memes on TikTok, twerk, and tyrannize their teachers.
> - boomers, 2023 A.D.
>Every time some new generation starts to create its own identity, some proportion of the previous dominant generation reacts defensively by attacking it with wilful ignorance and disdain. It's a tragic way to age. Worse than a ponytail and a motorbike.
Yep, these kind of articles are nonsense clickbait.
The idea that there’s a special GenZ rule about full stops is bullshit. It’s all just tone and context. If you’re texting someone who evidently likes ending every message with a full stop, you obviously aren’t going to assume every single message is insulting (unless you’re an idiot or very paranoid). If you’re texting with someone who never uses full stops but then they suddenly use one at the end of a message and the message is kind of abrupt (like if it’s refusing a request) then it might feel kind of ‘firm’. This is something any intelligent/sensitive person, at any age, could pick up on, or not. It’s nothing to do with GenZ. It’s been this way since the start of internet messaging. It’s just recently become a dumb meme that fills column inches in newspapers because it creates a confused talking point where boomers etc are supposed to be aghast that they’ve been accidentally offending GenZ people by using full stops. It’s just dumb, dumb, dumb.
Some of these make a lot of sense, not just as a Gen Z thing, but overall adopting them shouldn't annoy anyone. I will continue ending my sentences with a full stop but maybe I'll start picking more expressive emojis than :)
Very tangentially related: Instagram just started to roll out their new "status" line that shows up over your photo in everybody's message lists.
It's like if MSN Messenger status were back again, and young people that I know are loving it :)
I guess some ideas are fun no matter the generation. There are also older people who got to experience MSN Messenger, and are asking when the music status updates will come too!
Meta/Fb just brought a decades-old staple into their app, and I find that amusing.
Given that most of the stuff in the top article are the conversation of children that will quickly go away as they stop being children, I don't think it's worth having it be written down.
I think emojis are an objectively better communication tool. You can pack more emotion and nuances in emojis with much fewer characters. Yet I hate when I see them... Probably because I'm getting older and becoming less tolerant of young culture. Sad
Edit: I added a few emojis in the original message, but it seems automatically removed—another nice thing for hacker news.
Not really, they mean totally different things to different generations etc. and to add to that depending on your app and system they render completely different as to change the entire meaning.
And that is before taking into account totally arbitrary shortcuts and meanings are introduced in various communities.
As a communication tool within a tight group, sure. But outside that emojis are pretty darn bad. Unless you stick to the subset that pretty closely maps to ascii smileys.
I’ve seen emojis completely banned on some codes of conduct because of potential offence. The OK hand symbol, the basic smiley face, or using the white skin tone on Slack could all be seen as hostile by some groups of people. Yeah it’s a bit crazy but this is one of the necessities of inviting lots of diverse groups of different ages and backgrounds to work together - there’s less of a base of shared communication and more risk of angering others, so communication must become more formal and defensive (at least until people establish good will with each other).
I was expecting a list of unrelatable norms, but I think these apply for most people who regularly use digital means of communication, regardless of age.
Fortunately, most Zoomers are very good at code switching. For example, I had a conversation with my daughter about laughing emoji vs. skull and crossbones ("ded") because I was seeing tons of online discourse about it. Her response was "It's not a big deal to me or any of my friends because we know you're old." Well, ouch, but also OK. So I still text in complete sentences etc. and she doesn't and it's all fine.
Prognostication over the presence or absence of a single punctuation point seems like a problem for the reader. It assumes the author has the same background and understanding of these fine points that the reader does. This is probably an unreasonable assumption. I used to look for these shibboleths and hidden implications from minor stylistic issues. It's a bad habit. It often does reveal much. But it also tends to apophenia - seeing patterns that are not there. And it's so fuzzy that preconception tends to dominate. (You only worry about the abruptness of 'K.' if you're already worried about what they think of you.)
As a writer, try to follow the style your audience expects. That advice applies to informal personal communications. But don't engage heavily in this practice as a reader. It can be counterproductive to communication.
Might be a bit of a boomer opinion but the thing that kept coming up for me as I was reading that was “damn, that’s a lot of social insecurity built in by default to almost every interaction and conversation”.
Not all of it obviously and I don’t even think that’s strictly a Gen Z thing specifically (much of it could have been written about my mother for example) but JFC it sounds emotionally draining way to live your life.
I find this often meeting 'zoomers' in person. In contrast to the glued to the phone cliche, they're often enormously attentive, in an almost pained way. Incredibly careful in how they speak and - in accordance with the 'triggered' cliche - very easily upset or offended. Not only by transgression of their numerous linguistic prohibitions, but even misunderstandings about potential transgressions. The simplest way to explain it is they seem to assume bad faith, that things were ill intended, and that the worst interpretation something someone says is accurate. They seem to have grown up at a time of rapidly changing speech and behavioural codes, immersed in a culture that has harsh instantaneous judgement for their transgression. It seems like an extremely fraught and anxiety inducing way of being.
Actually, that might be a major alert. Yes, young people feel very insecure nowadays, and I bet much more than dork-me when I was 17. Spending time online doesn’t help feeling socially apt, and it builds up as an entire part of that generation identifying as socially afraid.
When a lot of your life happens online, and communication channels dedicate a lot more bandwidth to convey feelings, it's no surprise you can also hurt people when you send certain cues. And it's okay to feel insecure if someone makes you feel that way.
But don't worry, people are generally able to adapt to the other person, knowing that a boomer (or non-lit gen-z) might be oblivious to some rules, and is not out to scare you with a plain smiley ;)
Imagine trying to date a gen z with this much anxiety. And when you suggest preferring to meet in person instead of partaking in this absurd communication style, they get even more anxious and suspicious.
reading this comment, it does come across as inattentive, unable to pick up on social cues and subtleties (or take them seriously, when they're laid out like that), and inconsiderate, all of which is very boomer
just think back to your own ways of communication within your circles of people, that would be 'subtle' like that, and just, realize that 'this is just other people coming up with their own things'. like, even bro culture is chock full of social cues, subtleties, unspoken things, 'if they do this, you do that', and so on. it's truly not new in any sense, especially not in regards to what you call "insecurity". and 'sensitivity' is not a bad thing by any means. especially around and with your closest people.
But what does it mean when the third boyfriend of my first boyfriend whose first boyfriend I was keeps watching my Instagram stories but not following me, considering my first boyfriend blocked me everywhere? Are they sitting there together laughing at my stories? Does he watch me out of low self confidence? He must know I know he is watching them. Should I write him? That kind of would violate my rule to accept my first ex desire not to communicate with me ever again.
Young people / social media communication and whole new categories of communication channels / signs/cues like getting your story watched is quite complex!
I refuse to do this on Reddit. I long for a simpler time when it was literally impossible to tell who was being sarcastic and who is a genuine crazy person.
gen z here - stop using so many emojis; they make you seem fake. maybe 1/4th of your messages should contain emojis if you legitimately feel the need to "mask" as gen z for some reason.
To be fair given the context of snapchatting, tiktoking, voicemessaging, online dating [... stories, filters ...] written text is simply demoted to snippets of additional information/expressiveness.
Sentence-s, well structured sentences (with it punctuation marks and capitalization) are in this context like evoking latin phrases let alone a fortiori whole paragraphs.
If one takes chatgpt into the equation writing essays will be as calculating without a calculator for the next adolescent generation and used mainly as intimidation given the current education system - or preferably a playful approach at pattern recognition emerging from formal rules conveying abstract concepts.
> Your friend texts you "I am happy for you." --> Highly likely they hate you and even wish the worst for you, but they have to text anyway cuz every friend in the group is doing so.
I think it's implicit, but in case anyone didn't pick up on this, these tips are HIGHLY group dependent, which is roughly equivalent to being dependent on what app you use.
Irrelevant to the article, but it is a part of it, which made me think:
"Disclaimer: theoretically speaking I’m a genZ. But I could never identify myself as one because I never quite know about most of the rules until recently. This is a gen Z edition, because gen Z practices these rules a lot, not because I’m one."
I don't think the generation you're born in is something you identify with. Nor do I think that people "practice" the generational rules, as these "rules" are the result of their behaviour not something that one would practice/actively strive to do. As such, no matter what you do, that actions and behaviour is of the generation that you're born into.
Example:
You don't choose your parents, nor do you choose your siblings.
If most of your siblings engage in daily running but you don't, saying that you don't identify as a child of you parents because children of your parents engage in daily running, is a bit of a backwards to the objective truth. (I can't think of a better way to put it into words, but I hope that fellow thinkers can see the logic that I'm trying to explain.)
Maybe something like this:
It is illogical to define yourself by the actions of others.
Or:
The actions of others, front define who you are.
tl;dr:
You are GenZ not because of what you do. But because what you do, is done by GenZ.
Edit:
You are not a man because you do manly things. Things are manly because a man does them.
My only impression after reading this is that gen z must be filled with anxiety constantly. My stomach hurts. Why are they like this? Why are they making so many negative assumptions about the other participant in a conversation? Why is everything malicious?
None of this is new to me. I can totally identify with most of the gotchats presented in the article. I am far from being a Gen Z. If you were actually active on irc or icq, msn, aol (which are even explecitly mentioned in the blog post!) you know all this.
Total side thought - people capitalizing letters at the start of sentences because they're on mobile and not because they're on a laptop, would be a fantastic clue in a detective novel to flag up what device someone is sending messages with.
- Ending a sentence with period sounds overly serious for one-liner or short messages. If you write multiple sentences in a message it's still OK to use periods (though writing a long paragraph over multiple messages can also come off as serious, so ultimately it depends on the tone you want to convey in your message)
Everything there is to say is at most one sentence, it's twitter like "conversations" everywhere. If it's not funny after 3s of reading it's not worth their attention, that's why meme pictures are the best.
I have a feeling many would have problems reading basic articles where their attention would scream about jumping paragraphs.
the article doesn't get the rule quite right. if you're sending a message with more than one sentence in it, a full stop is fine. but on shorter messages, the end-of-sentence is implied by the end of the message, so putting in a full stop on top of that is redundant. it seems like you're putting extra emphasis on the ending part, and the implication is something like: "there will be no further discussion." so it can seem hostile.
and this isn't a gen z thing. it's just how instant messaging has worked forever.
The rule should have been to not use a full stop for the last sentence. You still need them to separate your sentences (unless you send them as separate messages)
Not stated, but implicit: If you have an Android phone, throw it away. No one wants to see your green bubbles, and no one can see if you've seen their texts if you have an Android.
I don't have the stats, but this feels pretty US-centric; many (most?) other countries use a different app for chatting... LINE, WhatsApp, Insta, whatever
This is a big surprise to me, mainly because the only time I get things in Messages.app it's an SMS from a business, 90% of which are either 2FA auth codes or my phone company telling me when the next payment/topup will happen.
You wish. Maybe in America. The rest of the world not. SMS are either for SPAM, for secure login PINs and for goverment advices. Not used by anyone anymore.
I don't wanna see people who hold brands above people, I'll stick with my Android. Though I must admit I do judge people with Samsung phones, simply for accepting the worst of both worlds.
proto-n|3 years ago
It's not done to be edgy, or to fit in, or anything like that. Its different tones in text. If the other party doesn't speak this language, then the communication becomes very literal, very formal. Kind of like how someone who is oblivious to social cues comes across in spoken conversations, only without the stigma, as its quite normal to not know this stuff. But it's much harder to 'feel' the other person.
safety1st|3 years ago
If you read someone's text and then also read their Instagram story and you still haven't replied, that's fine. If anything it's a bit of a power move. But really it's just what ends up happening when you're busy and don't have time to dick around on social media and overthink shit.
The article smacks of a mild anxiety disorder which is a common affliction of youth (sadly increasingly these days it's not so mild). The author would do well to ignore other people's petty shit and spend the next decade preoccupied with kicking ass at whatever he's best at.
neilv|3 years ago
And rules like in the article would all be easy to remember. What's not in the article is whether/what skills you'll need to develop to process all this information and noise.
For example, I remember seeing a busy chat room for the first time in the mid-'90s, and there was so much people talking, and it was scrolling seemingly too fast to read. (Bonus: I was on a then-vintage green CRT terminal, HP 2392A, at that moment, so incomprehensible scrolling of symbols was not entirely unlike the Matrix visual.)
But after some experience with the chat, it was no longer overwhelming. I could glance at the scrollage and have a sense of who was talking, what was being discussed, and possibly some meta of what was going on. And, for incoming messages, I could be tracking and selectively focusing among the often multiple concurrent threads of conversation.
I suppose skills a bit analogous to that might include how to manage the many different online services today you have to be on today, applying critical processing to advertising/engagement feed algorithms, juggling all this inefficient stuff with more real-life things, etc.
gonehome|3 years ago
All the rules around instagram likes and reposting, the rules around “k”, that “:)” is passive aggressive etc. A lot of that feels juvenile which makes sense if it’s a gen z post. I’d guess it’ll stop once out of teens and early to mid twenties.
I think when people are more secure/confident they stop doing as much meta analysis of this kind.
mlindner|3 years ago
ehnto|3 years ago
Same with the difference colours of laughter "lol, rofl, haha, hahaha, lmao, ha." They're all just laughing but I bet you had different ideas about how each of them feel. This happens with language at large, synonymous words pick up nuanced differences so that we can express ourselves better, they aren't codified they just spread naturally.
I think for full stops, it's like the difference between familiar language and polite language. If you are too polite with a close friend you give off the impression that you're not close enough for casual language, which can be insulting.
butler14|3 years ago
The only one that is new (and therefore annoying to me as an Old Internet Man) is the insistance of adding emojis into every sentence
For a while I could guess someones approximate age because of it, but now some of my 40+ friends have started emojiing like a 14 year olds too
popinman322|3 years ago
But it's also great for dry humor over text. Like when you switch to corporate-speak as a joke between friends:
A: "Looks like our main factory just blew up"
B: "Yes. Given the prevailing macroeconomic conditions, I felt that downsizing that factory was critical to actioning the quarterly plan."
---
Or alternatively, when you're sending a flurry of messages and want to show that you're done with the thought:
A: "Looks like things are improving"
A: "Like, the RAM use just dropped by ~20%"
A: "the GC probably just finished."
mlindner|3 years ago
detourdog|3 years ago
airstrike|3 years ago
flumpcakes|3 years ago
This one really surprises me, if someone contacted me without bothering to type a proper sentence I would just think they're an idiot. Everyone I know always starts a sentence with a capital letter, no matter the platform. They all know how to use the shift key.
This isn't even gate keeping, people use slang all the time, it is basic English. News, books, articles, tutorials, emails, teams, share point... Everything I read every day has proper capitalization.
csydas|3 years ago
As others pointed out, capitalization is similar to white space, punctuation, and other tools that English has when it comes to informal communication.
Especially online, you can invoke a lot of imagery and thoughts and emotions by simply playing with the rules of English in a live-chat setting. Try to imagine in a chat the following sentence with different stylizations:
"The Customer is always right, so we need to work to correct this"
"thE CUsTomer iS aLWays RIght, So WE neEd To WoRK To cOrrECT thiS"
"the customer is always right, so we need to work to correct this :))))"
The first is quite formal and it's direct; perhaps it could be understood as sarcasm if someone knows you well, but it could also be taken at face value and quite seriously, or it could be taken as a throw-away statement.
The second indicates a mocking tone and maybe even resentment, taking the time to mimic a meme and also to purposefully make the sentence silly looking.
The third introduces the sarcastic smiley (I disagree with the article's interpretation, as I've always seen :))) to more represent desperation or exasperation)
With traditional rules of English, tone is difficult to convey with a single sentence and it's built with the surrounding text as a point of consideration to understand how to interpret a statement; with chat, this is far more difficult to communicate the emotion/intention as chats can be very fast and disconnected, and it's hard to follow the attitude and mood of a person to understand their intended messaging.
You could try to divorce the message from the emotions, which might lead to expediting some discussions, but it also leaves a lot of room for incorrect/wrong interpretations. Even if you divorce yourself from such concerns and try to be above it, your conversation partners might not approach it the same way.
The evolution of chat might be bastardizing the classic rules of English, but it's quite expressive and personally has made many conversations and relationships much easier with fewer misunderstandings.
skupig|3 years ago
forgotpwd16|3 years ago
This netiquette is on chatting. And chatting in lower has been the case of choice since early IRC days.
Gigachad|3 years ago
The one thing that was completely true though was the smile thing “good job :)” is extremely toxic.
Most of this list is just things people tend to do but wouldn’t notice if you didn’t.
tuxxi|3 years ago
yummypaint|3 years ago
An "idiot" does things without knowing or considering why. People choosing to break old capitalization rules to better communicate are a step above those who can't handle that the english they learned in grade school no longer exists.
vasco|3 years ago
Other than that plenty of non idiots forget to capitalize a sentence.
kqr|3 years ago
(These days I aim for proper sentences also in instant messaging, acknowledging the asynchronous nature of it. But if I happen to catch my conversation partner active, I might switch to the more informal, "verbal" style.)
----
[1]: You may think you speak in proper sentences, but try to transcribe an audio recording literally some day. You might be surprised!
petesergeant|3 years ago
Sure, but doesn't that just mark you (and me) as older millenials / gen-X?
slyall|3 years ago
See the first email in this article:
https://www.businessinsider.in/emails-from-googles-eric-schm...
qwery|3 years ago
raverbashing|3 years ago
Those examples just sound real lazy Gen Z writing
The other ones I kinda agree (with measure), but this one is awful. Then they ask why "is it so hard to get a job". Job market issues aside, don't come across as a dork.
brmgb|3 years ago
eastbound|3 years ago
rbinv|3 years ago
wafflemaker|3 years ago
Semaphor|3 years ago
Wait till you encounter would of should of could of -.-
idk1|3 years ago
mechanical_bear|3 years ago
saagarjha|3 years ago
devnullbrain|3 years ago
throwaway98797|3 years ago
it’s a bit of a power move but also makes it easier to establish relationships
devnullbrain|3 years ago
If you find yourself finding smug, try looking at an old Reddit rage comic/4chan greentext/usenet flamewar, depending on your age.
kmbfjr|3 years ago
Your point is well taken, and thankfully I have neither a pony tail nor a motorcycle, but I am quite likely to observe 40 years of habit and driving in the guardrails of the language.
Or, ya know, don’t read shit into the message that isn’t there.
peoplefromibiza|3 years ago
My generation did it too.
Social progress is not linear growth but sinusoidal.
IncRnd|3 years ago
VoodooJuJu|3 years ago
> - Socrates, 400 B.C.
>Every time some new generation starts to create its own identity, some proportion of the previous dominant generation reacts defensively by attacking it with wilful ignorance and disdain. It's a tragic way to age. Worse than a diadema and a peneia.
> - the youth, 400 B.C.
---
>The children now love the internet; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love reddit in place of blog posts. Children are now tyrants, not the servants of their households. They no longer use facebook while their uncles still do. They contradict their parents, text before company, gobble up memes on TikTok, twerk, and tyrannize their teachers.
> - boomers, 2023 A.D.
>Every time some new generation starts to create its own identity, some proportion of the previous dominant generation reacts defensively by attacking it with wilful ignorance and disdain. It's a tragic way to age. Worse than a ponytail and a motorbike.
> - devnullbrain, 2023 A.D.
scotty79|3 years ago
Social media platforms approve.
xboxnolifes|3 years ago
mingus88|3 years ago
An entire generation has been trained by Mark Zuckerberg to boost engagement on his properties
demindiro|3 years ago
cal85|3 years ago
The idea that there’s a special GenZ rule about full stops is bullshit. It’s all just tone and context. If you’re texting someone who evidently likes ending every message with a full stop, you obviously aren’t going to assume every single message is insulting (unless you’re an idiot or very paranoid). If you’re texting with someone who never uses full stops but then they suddenly use one at the end of a message and the message is kind of abrupt (like if it’s refusing a request) then it might feel kind of ‘firm’. This is something any intelligent/sensitive person, at any age, could pick up on, or not. It’s nothing to do with GenZ. It’s been this way since the start of internet messaging. It’s just recently become a dumb meme that fills column inches in newspapers because it creates a confused talking point where boomers etc are supposed to be aghast that they’ve been accidentally offending GenZ people by using full stops. It’s just dumb, dumb, dumb.
a1371|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
Gigachad|3 years ago
j1elo|3 years ago
It's like if MSN Messenger status were back again, and young people that I know are loving it :)
I guess some ideas are fun no matter the generation. There are also older people who got to experience MSN Messenger, and are asking when the music status updates will come too!
Meta/Fb just brought a decades-old staple into their app, and I find that amusing.
BiteCode_dev|3 years ago
That's not a gen z thing. That's an entitle US social media projection.
nchie|3 years ago
jasoneckert|3 years ago
mlindner|3 years ago
alanng|3 years ago
hamasho|3 years ago
Edit: I added a few emojis in the original message, but it seems automatically removed—another nice thing for hacker news.
tjoff|3 years ago
And that is before taking into account totally arbitrary shortcuts and meanings are introduced in various communities.
As a communication tool within a tight group, sure. But outside that emojis are pretty darn bad. Unless you stick to the subset that pretty closely maps to ascii smileys.
silveroriole|3 years ago
spicyusername|3 years ago
notacoward|3 years ago
retrac|3 years ago
As a writer, try to follow the style your audience expects. That advice applies to informal personal communications. But don't engage heavily in this practice as a reader. It can be counterproductive to communication.
mdhb|3 years ago
Not all of it obviously and I don’t even think that’s strictly a Gen Z thing specifically (much of it could have been written about my mother for example) but JFC it sounds emotionally draining way to live your life.
dbspin|3 years ago
eastbound|3 years ago
Actually, that might be a major alert. Yes, young people feel very insecure nowadays, and I bet much more than dork-me when I was 17. Spending time online doesn’t help feeling socially apt, and it builds up as an entire part of that generation identifying as socially afraid.
gonzo41|3 years ago
groestl|3 years ago
But don't worry, people are generally able to adapt to the other person, knowing that a boomer (or non-lit gen-z) might be oblivious to some rules, and is not out to scare you with a plain smiley ;)
duggan|3 years ago
Hah, I think that's just part of being a young adult, isn't it?
switch007|3 years ago
pxoe|3 years ago
just think back to your own ways of communication within your circles of people, that would be 'subtle' like that, and just, realize that 'this is just other people coming up with their own things'. like, even bro culture is chock full of social cues, subtleties, unspoken things, 'if they do this, you do that', and so on. it's truly not new in any sense, especially not in regards to what you call "insecurity". and 'sensitivity' is not a bad thing by any means. especially around and with your closest people.
mlindner|3 years ago
Traubenfuchs|3 years ago
But what does it mean when the third boyfriend of my first boyfriend whose first boyfriend I was keeps watching my Instagram stories but not following me, considering my first boyfriend blocked me everywhere? Are they sitting there together laughing at my stories? Does he watch me out of low self confidence? He must know I know he is watching them. Should I write him? That kind of would violate my rule to accept my first ex desire not to communicate with me ever again.
Young people / social media communication and whole new categories of communication channels / signs/cues like getting your story watched is quite complex!
vsnf|3 years ago
unsupp0rted|3 years ago
I refuse to do this on Reddit. I long for a simpler time when it was literally impossible to tell who was being sarcastic and who is a genuine crazy person.
PartiallyTyped|3 years ago
elteto|3 years ago
mouse_|3 years ago
dav_Oz|3 years ago
Sentence-s, well structured sentences (with it punctuation marks and capitalization) are in this context like evoking latin phrases let alone a fortiori whole paragraphs.
If one takes chatgpt into the equation writing essays will be as calculating without a calculator for the next adolescent generation and used mainly as intimidation given the current education system - or preferably a playful approach at pattern recognition emerging from formal rules conveying abstract concepts.
maximus-decimus|3 years ago
People must really think I hate them lol.
antegamisou|3 years ago
bertman|3 years ago
plaguepilled|3 years ago
toastal|3 years ago
unsupp0rted|3 years ago
lleb97a|3 years ago
LoveMortuus|3 years ago
"Disclaimer: theoretically speaking I’m a genZ. But I could never identify myself as one because I never quite know about most of the rules until recently. This is a gen Z edition, because gen Z practices these rules a lot, not because I’m one."
I don't think the generation you're born in is something you identify with. Nor do I think that people "practice" the generational rules, as these "rules" are the result of their behaviour not something that one would practice/actively strive to do. As such, no matter what you do, that actions and behaviour is of the generation that you're born into.
Example: You don't choose your parents, nor do you choose your siblings.
If most of your siblings engage in daily running but you don't, saying that you don't identify as a child of you parents because children of your parents engage in daily running, is a bit of a backwards to the objective truth. (I can't think of a better way to put it into words, but I hope that fellow thinkers can see the logic that I'm trying to explain.)
Maybe something like this: It is illogical to define yourself by the actions of others.
Or:
The actions of others, front define who you are.
tl;dr: You are GenZ not because of what you do. But because what you do, is done by GenZ.
Edit: You are not a man because you do manly things. Things are manly because a man does them.
navjack27|3 years ago
braingenious|3 years ago
Wouldn’t this make the author a millennial?
MacsHeadroom|3 years ago
0x008|3 years ago
idk1|3 years ago
BeFlatXIII|3 years ago
Havoc|3 years ago
eschatology|3 years ago
- Ending a sentence with period sounds overly serious for one-liner or short messages. If you write multiple sentences in a message it's still OK to use periods (though writing a long paragraph over multiple messages can also come off as serious, so ultimately it depends on the tone you want to convey in your message)
mirekrusin|3 years ago
I have a feeling many would have problems reading basic articles where their attention would scream about jumping paragraphs.
_dain_|3 years ago
and this isn't a gen z thing. it's just how instant messaging has worked forever.
FinnKuhn|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
dschuetz|3 years ago
nipponese|3 years ago
The only thing that surprised me was that "outside" simply means "outside your home" now.
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
ravagat|3 years ago
jacooper|3 years ago
unsupp0rted|3 years ago
Is this a thing now? Smileys are bad?
intel_brain|3 years ago
kavaruka|3 years ago
rendall|3 years ago
thefz|3 years ago
HumanReadable|3 years ago
forgotpwd16|3 years ago
Am I doing it right?
m3drano|3 years ago
unknown|3 years ago
[deleted]
sdfjkl|3 years ago
SunghoYahng|3 years ago
[deleted]
cj|3 years ago
- Most people didn't capitalize
- People used a blend of text and regular emojis
- Acronyms were rampant... "sup", "nm", "wbu", "wyd", "brb", etc...
- Many of the same rules applied re: use of periods, having different meanings for "okay" vs. "kk" vs. "ok"
These rules started to form 20 years ago. Not new to this generation.
notarobot123|3 years ago
[deleted]
bitwize|3 years ago
Get an iPhone, like 90% of Gen Z. Or gtfo.
Fatnino|3 years ago
All, and I really do mean ALL, messages that arrive on my phone are over whatsapp, telegram or discord.
The green/blue bubble thing is classist and problematic and bringing it up is frankly embarrassing.
Dalewyn|3 years ago
That sounds like a feature.
petesergeant|3 years ago
ben_w|3 years ago
anthk|3 years ago
You wish. Maybe in America. The rest of the world not. SMS are either for SPAM, for secure login PINs and for goverment advices. Not used by anyone anymore.
mouse_|3 years ago
Hamuko|3 years ago
Not that it matters, I'm not American.
janmarsal|3 years ago