A good friend recently told me how messages over Gtalk can be easily misinterpreted, and how the misunderstandings caused by these can leave misleading impressions of you in the most misfortunate ways.
For example, since I first had a chat in 2001, I have considered :x as a smiley for anger.
Turns out the definition has changed. It now stands for a kiss.
When confused, she did prompt me for it and I did learn the commonly accepted meaning of it. (Thankyou for clearing that out), but it also made me think of all the people I have sent that smiley to in the past eight years and what all they've thought on seeing it.
All the mis's mentioned in the opening statement occur because of two reasons:
1) We are always typing and reading too fast, mostly without thinking too much.
2) We use too many abbreviations.
Consider this.
A friend told me yesterday how she had got a Pom PAship.
To start with, Pom looks a bit like Porn when you quickly dash your eyes from left to right, doesn't it?
Anyway, thats not important here. I was sane enough to read the message again.
Once I got the meaning and had a breath of relief, I responded to the good news with "gfu!"
It was supposed to mean "Good For U!"
Now, I don't know what she made out of it.. but I used the same "gfu" in a conversation with this other friend on GTalk today and he interpreted it as "Go Fuck Urself!"
Lesson learnt: Always use the phone for important conversations. If at all you use GTalk for casual ones, make sure the other person is smart enough to analyze things based on context.
