The Internet!
Some say "If Shakespeare were alive today
And saw the standards of language kids use
He would be rolling in his age-old grave
Which as a sentence is somewhat confused
The sentiment though might have a point
Just get on the 'net and surf the youthful abuse
Of the English language all out of joint
Infinitives are split, profanity's profuse
Those with something to say don't write letters
It's just e-mails and I.M.'s unfettered
By grammar or penmanship and fight
Endless fights to say the most with the least
If it were up to me English would be policed"
And for those of you who would agree
Who miss the noble art of letter-writing
Who know the difference between their there's, they're's and their's
(That looks better written down)
I have some letters for you
You pen-wielding few
And those are STFU
'cos brother, I'm from the internet
I've lived my life in texts and twitter
And you may fret
About our ROFL's, LOL's, our Meh's, IRL's and LMAO's
But don't knock it just 'cos you don't speak the lingo
As l337 (leet) and lol-speak have nuances
And cadences all of their own
And you rightly ph34r us
As our language will PWN urs.
You may try to cage us
Make language into bars
But English is ours now
These bars signify signal and loading times
And we lol a veritable lolocaust
At your attempts to hold us downn
As we've read the faq on your so called 'grammar'
And we'll ride out
Of your sad and stuffy linguistic cul-de-sac
On roflcopters of our own making
As on the 'net language can do anything
Except BE a net to hold us back
So your Queen's English, your King's Speech
Doesn't scare us.
We've seen things.
Goatse. Tubgirl. 2 Girls, 1 Cup.
Hogwarts/Giant Squid slash fiction.
Enough filth online to make you throw up
And gouge your i-pads out in horror
And if you don't know, don't ask
As we will tell
And share the link on your facebook wall.
So if a girl says ain't or lol
Don't pick on her
Or we'll invoke Godwin's Law
With your linguistic fascism
Then we'll rickroll ya
'Cos once the internet generation's
Got hold of the syntax
We're never gonna give it up
Never gonna let it go
Of course there are downsides too.
I haven't laughed in five years.
I just say 'lol'
Or slow it down to L-O-L for added irony
'Cos I grew up on the internet
Spent my formative child and teenage years there
Lost the ability to take anything seriously
Made most of my best friends there
Even if I still don't know what they look like
While other kids spent their time outside
Beneath that weird ball of fire in the sky
Getting exercise and tans
Clicking their hands and learning to say 'innit'
I was online learning to love words
To stretch them out
And strangle them down to fit
140 character limits
We cut language down to the quick to make it quick
And manageable
We operate on punctuation to make faces
To us conversations are constant typed races
And we're outrunning you
There's no sense being gentle on words
We twist and cut them to our own kinks and idiom
Our own dialect
That's shared throughout our community
That cares so much about communication
That we willingly sift through all the web's fornication
(which is, admittedly, often very reasonable)
Stretching out the lines of contact
Gossamer silk strands of data spanning continents
That's what the web is.
And it is world wide
In any given country we may not be prominent
But we're always there
And we're starting to care
About more than sticking speech bubbles to your cats
Or making motivational posters
We've started to take interest
In those governmental types who leech off nations
In fatcats instead of lolcats
Who'll turn to rats abandoning sinking shipping
When they've sent our societies the way of napster and social privacy
4Chan users will crawl out from their bridges and stop trolling
The cats will stop lol'ing
The internet pirates will stop focusing on films
And cease parroting 'polly wants a cracker
for this program as I don't have the serial key
Then world of warcrafters will abandon their instance
And you'll meet the resistance
Formed by the interwebs
Did you see what twitter and facebook did in Egypt?
That was just for starters
So don't give us any lip
About our poor grasp of English
Because we see the mess being made of our world
And you may try to repress us but first you must find us
And we're international
The internet at least is truly representational
So don't hack us off
Don't push our buttons
Or call us illiterate shut-ins
All we want right now
Are our words and languages, our lols and 1337's.
So I'll leave you with this question:
Can has language plz?
And saw the standards of language kids use
He would be rolling in his age-old grave
Which as a sentence is somewhat confused
The sentiment though might have a point
Just get on the 'net and surf the youthful abuse
Of the English language all out of joint
Infinitives are split, profanity's profuse
Those with something to say don't write letters
It's just e-mails and I.M.'s unfettered
By grammar or penmanship and fight
Endless fights to say the most with the least
If it were up to me English would be policed"
And for those of you who would agree
Who miss the noble art of letter-writing
Who know the difference between their there's, they're's and their's
(That looks better written down)
I have some letters for you
You pen-wielding few
And those are STFU
'cos brother, I'm from the internet
I've lived my life in texts and twitter
And you may fret
About our ROFL's, LOL's, our Meh's, IRL's and LMAO's
But don't knock it just 'cos you don't speak the lingo
As l337 (leet) and lol-speak have nuances
And cadences all of their own
And you rightly ph34r us
As our language will PWN urs.
You may try to cage us
Make language into bars
But English is ours now
These bars signify signal and loading times
And we lol a veritable lolocaust
At your attempts to hold us downn
As we've read the faq on your so called 'grammar'
And we'll ride out
Of your sad and stuffy linguistic cul-de-sac
On roflcopters of our own making
As on the 'net language can do anything
Except BE a net to hold us back
So your Queen's English, your King's Speech
Doesn't scare us.
We've seen things.
Goatse. Tubgirl. 2 Girls, 1 Cup.
Hogwarts/Giant Squid slash fiction.
Enough filth online to make you throw up
And gouge your i-pads out in horror
And if you don't know, don't ask
As we will tell
And share the link on your facebook wall.
So if a girl says ain't or lol
Don't pick on her
Or we'll invoke Godwin's Law
With your linguistic fascism
Then we'll rickroll ya
'Cos once the internet generation's
Got hold of the syntax
We're never gonna give it up
Never gonna let it go
Of course there are downsides too.
I haven't laughed in five years.
I just say 'lol'
Or slow it down to L-O-L for added irony
'Cos I grew up on the internet
Spent my formative child and teenage years there
Lost the ability to take anything seriously
Made most of my best friends there
Even if I still don't know what they look like
While other kids spent their time outside
Beneath that weird ball of fire in the sky
Getting exercise and tans
Clicking their hands and learning to say 'innit'
I was online learning to love words
To stretch them out
And strangle them down to fit
140 character limits
We cut language down to the quick to make it quick
And manageable
We operate on punctuation to make faces
To us conversations are constant typed races
And we're outrunning you
There's no sense being gentle on words
We twist and cut them to our own kinks and idiom
Our own dialect
That's shared throughout our community
That cares so much about communication
That we willingly sift through all the web's fornication
(which is, admittedly, often very reasonable)
Stretching out the lines of contact
Gossamer silk strands of data spanning continents
That's what the web is.
And it is world wide
In any given country we may not be prominent
But we're always there
And we're starting to care
About more than sticking speech bubbles to your cats
Or making motivational posters
We've started to take interest
In those governmental types who leech off nations
In fatcats instead of lolcats
Who'll turn to rats abandoning sinking shipping
When they've sent our societies the way of napster and social privacy
4Chan users will crawl out from their bridges and stop trolling
The cats will stop lol'ing
The internet pirates will stop focusing on films
And cease parroting 'polly wants a cracker
for this program as I don't have the serial key
Then world of warcrafters will abandon their instance
And you'll meet the resistance
Formed by the interwebs
Did you see what twitter and facebook did in Egypt?
That was just for starters
So don't give us any lip
About our poor grasp of English
Because we see the mess being made of our world
And you may try to repress us but first you must find us
And we're international
The internet at least is truly representational
So don't hack us off
Don't push our buttons
Or call us illiterate shut-ins
All we want right now
Are our words and languages, our lols and 1337's.
So I'll leave you with this question:
Can has language plz?