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Gen Z Netiquettes

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31–40 of 269 posts

Re: Gen Z Netiquettes

#31

> 9. Capitalizing the first letter in a sentence will reveal where you are This one really surprises me, if someone contacted me without bothering to type a proper sentence I would just think they're an idiot. Everyone I know always starts a sentence with a capital letter, no matter the platform. They all know how to use the shift key. This isn't even gate keeping, people use slang all the time, it is basic English.…

What about chatting or just shooting off one off messages? Isn't shift an overkill then?

Re: Gen Z Netiquettes

#32

> 9. Capitalizing the first letter in a sentence will reveal where you are This one really surprises me, if someone contacted me without bothering to type a proper sentence I would just think they're an idiot. Everyone I know always starts a sentence with a capital letter, no matter the platform. They all know how to use the shift key. This isn't even gate keeping, people use slang all the time, it is basic English.…

I think you're being overly harsh on this when it comes to informal communication.

As others pointed out, capitalization is similar to white space, punctuation, and other tools that English has when it comes to informal communication.

Especially online, you can invoke a lot of imagery and thoughts and emotions by simply playing with the rules of English in a live-chat setting. Try to imagine in a chat the following sentence with different stylizations:

"The Customer is always right, so we need to work to correct this"

"thE CUsTomer iS aLWays RIght, So WE neEd To WoRK To cOrrECT thiS"

"the customer is always right, so we need to work to correct this :))))"

The first is quite formal and it's direct; perhaps it could be understood as sarcasm if someone knows you well, but it could also be taken at face value and quite seriously, or it could be taken as a throw-away statement.

The second indicates a mocking tone and maybe even resentment, taking the time to mimic a meme and also to purposefully make the sentence silly looking.

The third introduces the sarcastic smiley (I disagree with the article's interpretation, as I've always seen :))) to more represent desperation or exasperation)

With traditional rules of English, tone is difficult to convey with a single sentence and it's built with the surrounding text as a point of consideration to understand how to interpret a statement; with chat, this is far more difficult to communicate the emotion/intention as chats can be very fast and disconnected, and it's hard to follow the attitude and mood of a person to understand their intended messaging.

You could try to divorce the message from the emotions, which might lead to expediting some discussions, but it also leaves a lot of room for incorrect/wrong interpretations. Even if you divorce yourself from such concerns and try to be above it, your conversation partners might not approach it the same way.

The evolution of chat might be bastardizing the classic rules of English, but it's quite expressive and personally has made many conversations and relationships much easier with fewer misunderstandings.

Re: Gen Z Netiquettes

#33
The full stop thing has been around since IRC networks, or I imagine any quick-response short message platform. No one ever explicitly explains it or notes it, you just pick up on it.

Same with the difference colours of laughter "lol, rofl, haha, hahaha, lmao, ha." They're all just laughing but I bet you had different ideas about how each of them feel. This happens with language at large, synonymous words pick up nuanced differences so that we can express ourselves better, they aren't codified they just spread naturally.

I think for full stops, it's like the difference between familiar language and polite language. If you are too polite with a close friend you give off the impression that you're not close enough for casual language, which can be insulting.

Re: Gen Z Netiquettes

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are all unironically true. But what does it mean when the third boyfriend of my first boyfriend whose first boyfriend I was keeps watching my Instagram stories but not following me, considering my first boyfriend blocked me everywhere? Are they sitting there together laughing at my stories? Does he watch me out of low self confidence? He must know I know he is watching them. Should I write him? That kind of wou…

I will never use any kind of messaging platform that insists on "Read receipts", or even worse, the typing breadcrumbs. Fuck that shit, I'll reply when I'm good and ready, that's a big part of what makes it fun. You never know when you're going to get a sweet little squirt of dopamine == unexpected or surprise reply

Everyone just reads them in the notifications so they don’t mark as read

Re: Gen Z Netiquettes

#35
post #21
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i'm millenial/gen-x cusp, and they all seemed pretty reasonable and intuitive to me, EXCEPT number 3 -- a good-old fashioned simple smiley is passive-aggressive and cold to gen-z??

Serious take: The new generation rejects what was acceptable to the previous generation as part of the process of developing their own identity. Humorous take: Sensitive snowflakes gonna sensitive.

Here's an attempt to demonstrate how :) can come off as very toxic or passive aggressive:

---

Serious take: The new generation rejects what was acceptable to the previous generation as part of the process of developing their own identity :)

Humorous take: Sensitive snowflakes gonna sensitive :)

Re: Gen Z Netiquettes

#36
post #12

Some of these make a lot of sense, not just as a Gen Z thing, but overall adopting them shouldn't annoy anyone. I will continue ending my sentences with a full stop but maybe I'll start picking more expressive emojis than :)

Go full boomer and send :-)

:o)

Re: Gen Z Netiquettes

#37
post #33

The full stop thing has been around since IRC networks, or I imagine any quick-response short message platform. No one ever explicitly explains it or notes it, you just pick up on it. Same with the difference colours of laughter "lol, rofl, haha, hahaha, lmao, ha." They're all just laughing but I bet you had different ideas about how each of them feel. This happens with language at large, synonymous words pick up nua…

Logged in to say the same; all of these have ultimately formed back in IRC days and have aged remarkably well since

The only one that is new (and therefore annoying to me as an Old Internet Man) is the insistance of adding emojis into every sentence

For a while I could guess someones approximate age because of it, but now some of my 40+ friends have started emojiing like a 14 year olds too

Re: Gen Z Netiquettes

#38
post #13

> 9. Capitalizing the first letter in a sentence will reveal where you are This one really surprises me, if someone contacted me without bothering to type a proper sentence I would just think they're an idiot. Everyone I know always starts a sentence with a capital letter, no matter the platform. They all know how to use the shift key. This isn't even gate keeping, people use slang all the time, it is basic English.…

You should probably spend more time on the internet, or be a bit more relaxed. Many people uncapitalize for stylistic effects, say to portray how you're uninterested or chill you are, which are very common young people signals for "I'm cool". Other than that plenty of non idiots forget to capitalize a sentence.

The “cool” stuff now on the Internet is to avoid the man-child stuff of trying to look cool by copying so-called habits of younger people.

I’d say that copying trend is mostly visible in the early- to middle-millennial cohort who are starting to realize that they’re not the center of the world anymore, a boomer-like reaction on a more reduced scale, if you wish.

Re: Gen Z Netiquettes

#39
post #14
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It’s written to be funny but I can vouch that these rules, such as they are, are all more or less correct.

i'm millenial/gen-x cusp, and they all seemed pretty reasonable and intuitive to me, EXCEPT number 3 -- a good-old fashioned simple smiley is passive-aggressive and cold to gen-z??

There’s also some etiquette about what emojis are boomer (thus u should never use them).

Re: Gen Z Netiquettes

#40

> 9. Capitalizing the first letter in a sentence will reveal where you are This one really surprises me, if someone contacted me without bothering to type a proper sentence I would just think they're an idiot. Everyone I know always starts a sentence with a capital letter, no matter the platform. They all know how to use the shift key. This isn't even gate keeping, people use slang all the time, it is basic English.…

Both my Marroccan employees didn’t capitalize sentences, whereas they capitalized nouns, even in customer-facing apps. Does this concept exist in Arabic languages?
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