One time she was in IRC and mentioned eating candy and someone started yelling at her for it because I don't eat candy. They were saying, do you or don't you?? She was like, I do! but my dad don't!
That's a pretty assy thing for someone to do, really, to a little kid or anybody. I mean, what the hell? Yelling at someone over candy? There are probably stupider things to yell at someone over, but I'll bet it's a short list.
Personally speaking, I think avoiding being told that you're not real by adopting certain behaviors is a wasted effort. We're pretty much resigned right now to the fact that anything we do, adaptive or otherwise, is going to be used as evidence against us in a court of public opinion, and it doesn't take too much imagination to believe that's the case for other people too. I mean, if you admit to being a multiple system, you've already got a bunch of singlets who don't know you but will use every minor personal detail to try and prove you're making it all up for attention.
The sad fact is that a lot of multiple systems seem to end up doing that too, and I sure as hell don't know why, as I really don't care enough about Lilspeak to see why it should matter so much whether a kid uses it or not. I think it's dumb and hard to read, yeah, but that's personal opinion, and it doesn't reflect on what I think of the kid using it, even if the grammar does set off certain alarms.
Generally, when I run into really thick Lilspeak, the scenario my brain comes up with is that of an adult member influencing the typing to be more 'cute', not that of a scheming con-artist or something like that. I wonder how much of the Lilspeak came from the kid, and how much came from a well-meaning but old-fashioned 'typist'. It's annoyance over the difficulty of reading the phonetic spelling (Hooked on Phonics DID NOT work for me) and suspicion about the level of alteration and censorship due to the possibility of a editor-middleman.
Plus, and I might get flamed the heck out of me for this one, Asperger's makes understanding the subtext of normal speech hard enough. Lilspeak can sometimes totally blank out what little understanding I have of context-specific "unspoken rules of socialization" because then I have no clue what rules apply. (e.g., "Is this kid joking or being serious? I can't tell! If an adult was saying this, it'd probably be a joke, but this kid isn't tossing any Joke Markers...") This probably sounds idiotic, but that part of the Lilspeak misunderstanding might be improved by liberal use of non-ironic smilies. (Smilies are useful and only dumb when used to muddy up the waters instead of clearing them. That's my take, anyway. I think they ought to be used on all ambiguous statements in colloquial use. But I'm just a freak, anyway.)
So, in conclusion, people who point-blank tell a kid they're not real because they use or don't use Lilspeak are jerks. But Lilspeak does cause communication problems of a fundamental sort with people who aren't fluent in it, and kids should know that too before they choose it as a permanent way of writing online.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2005-06-30 04:43 am (UTC)That's a pretty assy thing for someone to do, really, to a little kid or anybody. I mean, what the hell? Yelling at someone over candy? There are probably stupider things to yell at someone over, but I'll bet it's a short list.
Personally speaking, I think avoiding being told that you're not real by adopting certain behaviors is a wasted effort. We're pretty much resigned right now to the fact that anything we do, adaptive or otherwise, is going to be used as evidence against us in a court of public opinion, and it doesn't take too much imagination to believe that's the case for other people too. I mean, if you admit to being a multiple system, you've already got a bunch of singlets who don't know you but will use every minor personal detail to try and prove you're making it all up for attention.
The sad fact is that a lot of multiple systems seem to end up doing that too, and I sure as hell don't know why, as I really don't care enough about Lilspeak to see why it should matter so much whether a kid uses it or not. I think it's dumb and hard to read, yeah, but that's personal opinion, and it doesn't reflect on what I think of the kid using it, even if the grammar does set off certain alarms.
Generally, when I run into really thick Lilspeak, the scenario my brain comes up with is that of an adult member influencing the typing to be more 'cute', not that of a scheming con-artist or something like that. I wonder how much of the Lilspeak came from the kid, and how much came from a well-meaning but old-fashioned 'typist'. It's annoyance over the difficulty of reading the phonetic spelling (Hooked on Phonics DID NOT work for me) and suspicion about the level of alteration and censorship due to the possibility of a editor-middleman.
Plus, and I might get flamed the heck out of me for this one, Asperger's makes understanding the subtext of normal speech hard enough. Lilspeak can sometimes totally blank out what little understanding I have of context-specific "unspoken rules of socialization" because then I have no clue what rules apply. (e.g., "Is this kid joking or being serious? I can't tell! If an adult was saying this, it'd probably be a joke, but this kid isn't tossing any Joke Markers...") This probably sounds idiotic, but that part of the Lilspeak misunderstanding might be improved by liberal use of non-ironic smilies. (Smilies are useful and only dumb when used to muddy up the waters instead of clearing them. That's my take, anyway. I think they ought to be used on all ambiguous statements in colloquial use. But I'm just a freak, anyway.)
So, in conclusion, people who point-blank tell a kid they're not real because they use or don't use Lilspeak are jerks. But Lilspeak does cause communication problems of a fundamental sort with people who aren't fluent in it, and kids should know that too before they choose it as a permanent way of writing online.