On the internet, no one knows that you’re a dog. But everyone can tell you’re an old fart, and you’ve got to get that under control.
Even Facebook’s worried about you and is trying to help. It released research this week showing that “lol” is mainly used by old people these days. Not only is the acronym for laugh out loud dying out, accounting for just under 2% of virtual laughs, but its users are dying too. The average lol-er is now 28 years old: positively ancient in internet years. Compare this archaism to the sprightly youths who choose to express laughter with such emojis as Face With Tears Of Joy and Smiling Face With Open Mouth And Smiling Eyes.
Frankly, it’s just getting embarrassing. If you’re going to hang out with young people – and on the internet, you’re always hanging out with young people – you’re going to have to learn to blend in. Here’s what you need to change.
Emoji
When you use it: When you accidentally click the keyboard button on your phone and can’t work out how to get it back to the normal alphabet.
How to fix it: Learn a few universal emojis. These are the icons that have come to have a shared meaning in the syntax of the internet, like the nails emoji, which symbolises a degree of non-caring fabulousness, or the arm-curl emoji, which works as a fist-pump for the successful. Then accessorise with the faces that match your emotions (like happy, sad or mortified) and finally throw in a few freestyle ones to illustrate your particular situation.
Capital letters
When you use them: At the beginning of a sentence, at the start of a proper noun, or in initialisms such as UN or SNP that aren’t pronounced as a single word.
How to fix it: firstly, stop using them entirely. ideally you’ll also cut back on punctuation too because really there’s not much punctuation that can’t be replaced with a well-placed carriage return. once you’ve got rid of your capital letters you can reintroduce them for emphasis LIKE EVERYONE HAS KNOWN FOR EVER but you can also practise capping up the first letters of Very Important Sentences in order to give them the hefty intonation they deserve and if you really want to blend in with some corners of tumblr JUST HIT CAPS LOCK AND NEVER TURN IT OFF.
Noses
When you use them: In an old-school emoticon, or “smilie”. Commonly represented by a hyphen :-)
How to fix it: De-nose them. There’s no time to be typing out hyphens. You’re a busy person. You’ve got house parties to attend and other young people stuff to do. Just whack out colon-close-bracket and be done with it :)
Selfies
When you use it: When you don’t realise you’ve got your phone set to use the front-facing camera, not the rear-facing one; or when you’re using it as a mirror and accidentally hit the shutter button.
How to fix it: Post more pictures of yourself. You’re probably a fine-looking person – share that with the world. And if you’re not fine-looking, just adjust the lighting and angle until you are. Everyone has a good side.
Memes
When you use them: When someone sends you a funny picture with big writing at the top and you hit the forward button and send it to your entire address book.
How to fix it: Develop a well-honed sense of irony. You can pass memes on – that’s fine – but you’ve got to be doing it through so many levels of irony and post-irony that you’re not even sure what you’re sincere about any more. Are the yellow unintelligible Minions from the film Despicable Me funny? You don’t think Minions are funny. But you have posted more than 40 minion memes to your Tumblr in the last week, and now everyone calls you “the minion guy”, so you can’t be certain what you think.
When you use it: To talk to your friends from work and your family members you haven’t seen in a while and to post pictures of your lovely wedding and ugly baby.
How to fix it: Lock down your account’s privacy settings, unfriend everyone you don’t actually like, and then use it to complain about your colleagues. Lol.