Teenage boy unsure whether to use smiley, heart emoticon

pic: wikimedia commons

Following Friday night’s message from 14-year-old Jane Hadley to 15-year-old Eric Carlson containing not one but two winking smileys, a hug emoticon and a colon and capital ‘D’ combined to make a grinning text face, the young boy is reportedly unsure how to respond, saying there isn’t a smiley or textual emoticon that fits neatly into the category of appropriate responses.

“We’ve been texting for a while now, and she sent me two x’s the other day, so it’s safe to say that things are getting pretty serious,” he said, gesturing to his Blackberry. “But I can’t use a single x, because we’re past that stage, and even the double x is getting a little stale. I just don’t know what to do.”

According to Carlson, a whole range of usual responses is now unsuitable.

“I can’t send her three x’s, because that might be too forward – you know, a little raunchy? – and if I send back a heart emoticon with a wink and a smile she might read into it too much,” he said. “Usually I would just type out a laugh, you know, ‘hahahahaha’ and then send a winking smiley or two back, but I really want this single instant message to make an impact, a real lasting impression, on her.”

Media Message experts have agreed that the young boy is in quite a conundrum, as moving forward into three x’s, or even a combination of ‘x’s and ‘o’s, is “a definitely too saucy”, and that “most normal smileys available to him are too benign and friendly to convey his true feelings about her”.

“As text smileys stand right now, he’s in a difficult spot,” said Reed Zintouet. “How can he tell the girl how he really feels, what he honestly thinks about her, if all he has are smileys that convey a very limited set of emotions?”

Sources close to the teenage boy now report that he is considering what could almost be proper spelling and grammar to show how much he cares for Jane.

“We looked at his phone the other day and saw that he is now using ‘yuo’ instead of ‘u’ and stuff like ‘too’ and ‘to’ and whole words instead of a garble of vowel-less bastard words,” they said to reporters.

Analysts now estimate Eric to be only four and a half months away from actually talking to Jane, and a mere eight months before they have a full conversation.

“If he keeps at this break-neck pace, they’ll be holding hands before his 17th birthday.”

However, there still is no reliable guess as to when they might one day have sex, as queries to this effect were met with stifled giggles and outbursts of laughter when we mentioned the word ‘penis’ or ‘vagina’.

“He said it again!” said Eric’s friend, Jake. “Hahahahaha, ’penis’!”

RICA intercepts spy texts

pic: Alton, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Texting.jpg

South African Secret Services have been left reeling this morning after communications monitoring act RICA intercepted thousands of heavily encrypted spy messages cleverly hidden as stupid, meaningless, badly-spelled texts.


The Registration and Interception of Communications Act, or better known as "that fucking thing that means I need ten thousand reams of paperwork to buy a phone" successfully intercepted these messages sent on various instant-messaging platforms such as Brokeberry Messenger (BBM) and WhatsApp messenger.

According to Security Specialist and Decryption Expert Hiddin Meenin, many incriminating and covert messages were discovered on these platforms.

"Our suspicions were first raised when we discovered thousands upon thousands of horrifically constructed messages utterly devoid of any real grammar, punctuation, or syntax," he said. "Why would anyone be this stupid and completely ignore the basic rules of talking to another human being? Unless... unless they were trying to hide something."

Security experts were shocked by what they found.

"Some of these spies - many of them working for Mossad and the CIA, as well as the KGB - have incredibly deep cover," Meenin said. "You'd actually be fooled into thinking they're truly dumb and lazy, and don't give a rat's ass about making a word of sense or adding, say, vowels and full words into their messages."

Since the discovery, they've decoded some truly shocking messages.

"This one might look like it says 'hy bb, gn 2 da rat 4 a drink, u wnt 2 cum? Just me n the guyz. Chek u l8a.'" he said, showing us one of the intercepted messages, "where actually when decoded it reads 'Operation Sundown is a go. We strike at midnight. Arms cache located in northern warehouse. Viva la revolcion, comrade.'

The police have since arrested thousands of foreign nationals, suspected spies, and Blackberry owners between the ages of 14 and 22. However, early reports suggest that perhaps many of these potential criminals are, in fact, just students who don't give a shit whether they sound like brain-dead morons when they have a phone in their hand.

"Honestly, this one dude who has charges of sedition and treason against him spells like he was educated by wolves. Except wolves would probably have some self-respect when they tweet at each other," said MP John Fisher, who was speaking metaphorically, because wolves lack the opposable thumbs and higher cognitive functions to properly utilise communication technologies efficiently.

Other politicians agree.

"For these to be the work of operatives of internationally infamous intelligence agencies, you actually expect some intelligence,' said Chief of Police Shudbhee Fyred. "So far, we've found very little."

Before Muse and Abuse left, Meenin showed us another example.

"Look at this one: 'hy hun, hw u doing 2nyt? Herd bt u n Tony, he's such a'... No... Sorry, that's just a shallow piece of shit message. It's pretty easy to confuse the two."