Ten years from now

What did the zero say to the eight?

“Nice belt.”

NO! STOP LAUGHING! I want to tell you something really alarming.

Ten years from now, when we’re all 25 or 26, and maybe considering kids (or already parents!) laughter may not even exist anymore! Instead of you sitting there in your seat, laughing at my awful joke, the kids and teenagers of ten years from now will just be saying ‘lol’.

I’m quite serious. Already, people have started to use this internet-founded expression of amusement in real life, along with other expressions such as ‘rofl’.

There’s just something about hearing people laugh that makes us laugh! Lots of the time, we may not even understand something someone has said, but other people laugh, so we laugh. It’s contagious.

Ten years from now, it’s quite likely that laughter won’t even exist! Kids won’t laugh at the jokes their trying-to-be-funny peers tell them. They’ll just say ‘lol’. They won’t roll on the floor laughing! They’ll just say ‘rofl’. It sounds sort of boring, doesn’t it! ‘Lol’ and ‘rofl’ aren’t contagious at all, are they?

But the text-speak revolution doesn’t end with laughter. What about that great expression, ‘ily’?

‘ily’, I-L-Y, stands for I love you. One of the most meaningful things you can say to a person! People wait their whole lives to hear those three words, and they’ve been reduced to a simple acronym that you can say without even meaning it! In the future, when proposing, will guys get down on one knee and say, ‘ily, will you marry me?’ I seriously hope not! That would be an AWFUL proposal!

And can you imagine wedding speeches? “When I first spotted Sarah, I knew that she was the one for me. Sarah, I’m so glad we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together… ILY!”

Yuck. What a way to spoil the moment! How can something so beautiful, so meaningful, possibly retain any meaning at all when it has been turned into nothing more than 3 letters?

And finally, what about that actually STUPID expression, ‘biffle!’ Um, what? Best friends for life? BFFL? Biffle?

Once again, internet-speak has changed something meaningful, telling someone they mean so much to you that you want to be friends with them for your entire life, into something inane and utterly meaningless only said (currently) by tween girls whose only obsessions are One Direction* and boys in general. You even SOUND stupid when you say it. Biffle. That doesn’t sound like a word at all! It sounds like a brand of pillows or tissues or something!

We really need to do something about this! Let’s not let internet shorthand destroy laughter, love and friendship! I want my kids to grow up in a world where they laugh, hear the words ‘I love you’ and have a best friend for life, not a ‘biffle’.

Ten years from now, I hope that we still know how to speak in a way that actually means something. I want to be able to tell a joke and have people laugh, even though they’re probably laughing at me, not at the joke!

*No offence, girls. I'm just joking. DON'T HURT ME.

18 does not an adult make

My friends have started turning 18. I have another two months to go until I reach that age, but all of a sudden, according to the law, I have adult friends. It's quite weird to look at people I've known since year 7 and think 'that person is legally an adult!'

18 means many things. It means that you can drink, buy alcohol and cigarettes. You can get married, if you want, without parental permission. You can get a credit card, own property, buy plane tickets in your own name, you can even change your name!

But does this make you an adult? According to the law, yes, but I (being close to this age myself) have been thinking about this quite a lot lately, and I've decided that there are a few other factors that should be added to the definition of adult, apart from reaching the magic number.

1. The ability to say no. Kids say yes to everything appealing, even if it's not good for them. They'll lie to their parents about being sick so they can go to a friend's house after school and end up throwing up all over their backyard (it only happened once. A long time ago.). They'll eat and eat and eat junk food just because it's there, not stopping even when they're full. If you can say 'No', you are getting closer to being an adult.
2. Ability to get a job. You don't have to have a job, because some people are at school/studying/living off a massive inheritance, but you do have to have the ability to get one. So good personal hygiene, the ability to look someone in the eye and the ability to express yourself at least reasonably well should be there before you're classified an adult.
3. A general understanding of who gets told what. Yes, I'm talking about tact, secrets, oversharing and other wonderful things like that. Don't keep telling the same friend about your secrets if she just keeps telling others. Don't tell your mate that his acne is looking really bad lately. And DON'T tell me all about the surgery you just had when you know I'm squeamish. Mistakes are fine - but you can't be an adult until you have at least a small understanding of when to keep your mouth shut.

If you can do all these things when you turn 18 then congratulations - in my eyes, you are an adult. Of course, if you turn 18 and you can't do these things then in the eyes of the law you're still an adult, but I am pretty sure you're going to want to develop these things pretty quickly!