too awesome not to share

[meretricula]

eala and I have some weird convos when we're both trying to do work at hideous hours.

me: hmm
do you think in like 2000 years
people will be trying to decypher the dead language
of the internets
and will be frustrated by not being able to tell emoticons apart from netspeakisms
like ROFL
eala: hahah
maybe
me: IS IT A WORD PICTURE/
I DON'T UNDERSTAND
eala: but there'll be whole kinds of scholarship around like
the vernacular
me: WHAT IS ROFL SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE
eala: DID THEY TALK LIKE THIS?
me: hee
only if they were douches
eala: and people would be like "no, the spoken language of the internets was much less linguistically complex"
me: ahaha
HOW DO YOU PRONOUNCE =DDDDDDDD
eala: hahaha
me: SOmeONE WILL WRITE A PAPER
eala: WE THINK THAT ROFLMAO MAY HAVE BEEN DERIVED FROM A RELATED COMMUNIST WORD
FOR "SMALL, HUMORLESS MAN"
me: LOL
eala: and there will be students
who will have to take a requisite two semesters
of Old Internet
to fulfill a distribution requirement
and they'll be like "Man, this is so stupid, this doesn't make any sense. Why do we have to take this?" and the professors will be all "It will help you understand modern Internet!"
me: haha yes!
Twitter is the Beowulf of the 4000s
eala: And there'll be only fragments of livejournals remaining
people will talk about like, cleolinda
me: oh god
what if they think Twilight is like this great work of literature
because everyone talks about it
but they have no extant copy
so it's all IF ONLY WE HAD TWILIGHT, WE WOULD KNOW SO MUCH ABOUT THEIR CULTURE
eala: haha yes, exactly
and then they find fragments
and they're like
THIS CAN'T BE IT
IT MUST BE AN IMITATOR
THIS IS TERRIBLE
me: LOL
there will be fights in the scholarship
over whether they can make qualitative judgments
about the work of the ancients
eala: exactly!
and their cultural mores
"It was a different time, it was okay to make fun of vampires back then."
me: AHAHAHA OMG
VAMPIRES ARE PEOPLE TOO
eala: Someone will present a paper
me: IT'S NOT OKAY TO STIGMATIZE THEM
eala: at the future version of Kalamazoo
"Was Cleolinda Speciesist? Does It Matter?"
(I like the idea of Cleolinda as the Chaucer of today)
me: gleefacing so hard right now
eala: God, I wish I could live into the future

sometimes people who study dead languages have a slightly odd view of the present...

Comments

[applegnat.livejournal.com]

Oh god, I can't see what I'm typing because I am WEEPING with laughter. My eyes are streaming tears.

[meretricula.livejournal.com]

well, at least my paper went 66% unwritten for a good cause!

[applegnat.livejournal.com]

Bless you, lady, I'd write it for you if I could in exchange for this crack.

[meretricula.livejournal.com]

rofl! (seriously, look at ROFL sometime. ONL is an emoticon, how the fuck are you supposed to know ROFL isn't like the twister version with pigtails?) but the paper is a major snooze-fest, i wouldn't wish it on anyone. i actually feel quite bad for the TA who's going to have to read it.

[tinuvielchild.livejournal.com]

This would become a hugely important primary source for determining how to pronounce netspeakisms...but I can only imagine the questions the WoW-only abbreviations in the middle would raise!

(ilu)

[meretricula.livejournal.com]

lol.

(okay, last night is kind of a blur of hideous paper writing. did I call you back? I honestly have no recollection. anyway, got your message, all is cool, no worries! we will try and hang when I get back. &hearts)

[paper-tzipporah.livejournal.com]

OMG I LOVE YOU GUYS SO HARD. Also, I am linking to this in my LJ. And I want an icon of Twitter is the Beowulf of the 4000s!

[meretricula.livejournal.com]

hee! awesome. I kind of want one of "HOW DO YOU PRONOUNCE =DDDDDDDD" but I have no idea how one would icon a frustrated Old Internet student 2000 years in the future. XD

[eala.livejournal.com]

Well, here are a bunch of images of the original Beowulf manuscript http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&hl=en&sa=1&q=beowulf+manuscript&btnG=Search+Images&aq=0&oq=beowulf+manusc


So maybe you could superimpose the text on that? IF YOU DO I WANT ONE PLZ.

[meretricula.livejournal.com]

~hugs~ we need to get cranky and extremely sleep-deprived more often bb! apparently it makes us SUPER GENIUSES. (still not done with this fucking paper.)

[gules]

OH MY GOD I LOVE YOU. THERE IS NOT FONT BIG ENOUGH TO FULLY EXPRESS MY GLEE. :DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

[meretricula.livejournal.com]

XDDDDDD YAY!