Screw You, MSN
Created | Updated Dec 4, 2008
I hate you, Microsoft. I hate you for your bug-ridden software; I hate you for you appalling customer service, and I hate you for designing everything you make with all the style of a Star Trek convention. But most of all, I hate you for MSN.
If Satan and Darth Vader somehow managed to have a child (errgh!), it would be MSN. Seriously, it’s that bad. MSN is truly a tool of the dark side; it converts normal teenagers into relapsed, idiotic halfwits with the brainpower of a mackerel and all the grammar of one. There's nothing wrong with txtspk (lol!), as long as it serves its purpose – to allow its user to quickly type passages without any loss of meaning. However, it's now degraded into a drab, often incomprehensible, series of nonsense. Ok, so I'm coming down hard here, but I'm bloody fed up with the constant, meaningless chatter that my generation seems to spend half their lives glued to a screen for (myself included). A typical MSN conversation tends to go something similar to this:
lolcakesf2131: 'hi!'
Chaxx: 'hi!'
lolcakes2131: 'howz u?'
Chaxx: 'im gd thx. U?'
lolcakes2131: gd. Lol!
At this stage, there's a usually a pause for a couple of minutes, as neither participant can think of anything else to say. Eventually, and after much cogitation, one of them will hazard another phrase:
Chaxx: 'been up 2 much?'
Lolcakes2131: 'nm. U?'
Chaxx: 'nm. lol'
By now you may have noticed the random, and usually incessant, outbursts of 'lol!'. Lol, which supposedly stands for 'Laugh out loud', and its synonyms (lolz, lolumz, roflcopter, and omfglolrofllmao, among others) are exclaimed whenever something could possibly be perceived to be amusing in any way, and often when it couldn't be either. The MSN equivalent of 'like', lol is used as a filler whenever the chatter can't think of anything else to say, so it appears with depressing regularity. As I said, it's not the chatters themselves that are to blame, (I hope), but the software itself: Microsoft has installed some sort of mind-controlling, brain-destroying device within the heart of MSN. Worst of all, the Messenger family has grown – MSN now has its very own siblings, Yahoo!, AIM, and God knows how many others to play with, all ensuring that the youth of the western world stay constantly glued to their laptops, partaking in futile, insincere conversations.
I can only surmise this is a conspiracy to take over the world, one vulnerable teenage mind at a time. Mothers, take your children and run for the hills. Forget mobile phones. MSN's the new Terminator.
