affectu

Communication is changing all the time.  And with modes of communication going in and out of fashion (smoke signals and semaphore, written word and the pony express, the telephone, the cell phone, email and texting, videochat...) the way that we express ourselves and get our meaning across changes too.

Here's an invention that accompanied the development of email and texting:

:)

Adorable, really.

With communication more available and mindless than ever before, it's so much easier to insert simple faces in an attempt to illustrate tone than it is to spend time developing a caustic, sarcastic, or sincere tone through word choice and all that rhetoric.

And because it's so much easier to omit tonal clues in your writing, it's also becoming much more difficult to be able to pick up on them when they're there.

For example, internet sarcasm.  Unless you're a close friend of someone and you know exactly what they would and wouldn't say and mean, sarcasm is often taken to be sincere. 

Which is kindof hilarious in some instances...

But even so, it's become somewhat necessary to include an obvious pointer to one's sarcastic remarks.  Like so:

↓↓SARCASM↓↓

"I really wish that I had read the twilight books"

↑↑SARCASM↑↑

This is frustrating, that the general public with their fifth-grade reading level cannot detect any sort of satire unless it's pointed out to them.

Conversely, I'm quite fond of the development of emoticons.  I sometimes have problems reminding myself not to include them in my essays for school.

:P

I guess it all evens out.