That awkward moment

By Manas Gupta 

aka @Spooferman_

Internet lingo, it seems, is constantly evolving. Unfortunately, for people like me —delusional about still being young and dare I say cool — keeping up with the jargon can be quite a chore.

I joined Twitter a couple of years back and much to my delight, found an entire new world reveling in puns, wordplay and PJs, an ailment I'm often chastised for in real life by friends and family. I felt right at home, or so I thought.

Twitter, however, is a different animal. It's young, brash and bursting with energy and horny teenagers, who all speak in a language that pretends to be English but is way "cooler".

I got my first taste of it when confronted with a teenager who criticised one of my cringe-worthy PJs. Now criticism, as we all know, is a bitter pill to swallow, however rational you may be. When I politely asked this young man to explain, he came up with, "Calm yo titties!" I was stumped. Aside from the fact that this seemed to be an Indian boy speaking, nay writing, in a style straight out of Harlem, New York (yeah, call me racist), I was flummoxed by the reference to my er, nipples.

Anyway, I put that incident behind me and dove into the world of double entendres and silly hashtags on Twitter. However, before I could even fathom the reason behind #replacemoviewith(fill in the blank here) hashtags I encountered the phrase "woot woot". Yes. That is a phrase. According to the urban dictionary (yes, that is a dictionary), it is an "expression of complete approval or joy".

Now, I think of myself as a rational human being. (Okay, some of my friends may not think so, but they are not writing this article, are they?). But, for the love of God, (sorry, I mean Sachin Tendulkar) I cannot understand the reason for mimicking an owl to show joy. Have you ever observed an owl? They always look sad or angry or just constipated. Ever seen an owl smile? Heck, when he says "woot woot", he probably means "what-what, what the fuck you looking at?"

Sure, I've made my peace with the LOLs and the ROFLs and even (shudder) LMAOs. But even for someone whose made a career out of smartly murdering the English language, some things are just incomprehensible.

Another phrase that's the rage is YOLO. It means (hold your breath), you only live twice. Ian Fleming must be rolling over in his grave. Remember, at the start of this article I talked about being young? Sigh! Clearly I was mistaken.

Then you have emoticons. These are also called emojis. Huh? Why? Frankly, adding 'ji' after anything and not adding 'scam' after it should be a crime.  

Amid all this, what really takes the cake on twitter is something called 'that awkward moment'. It's not complicated. It really is all about awkward moments. But if you don't have them, you, sir or madam, are just not cool. In fact, you tweeting is 'that awkward moment' when you try to be cool.

Of course, some of these teens don't even know what really awkward moments are. I'm pretty sure Adam and Eve had the first awkward moment. An awkward moment is when you meet recently separated Siamese twins and ask, "can I join you?" However, when you stumble and fall flat on your face, that's not an awkward moment. That's just stupid. Also hilarious, unless you broke something or died. Then it's an awkward moment.

Frankly, I could go on and on about twitter lingo that makes me uncomfortable or look like a douche bag (yes another twitter favourite). However, that would make this piece TLTR. Too long to read.

PS: ROFL is what dogs do. Hence it's cool.