What I Text About When I Send "Minor"* Text Messages
Somewhat on the subject of emails and text messages: I was cleaning out my custom word list in my BlackBerry so that it would stop prefering some of my frequent typos to actual words: “wheee” instead of “where”, etc. And the list of words I’ve “taught” my phone in the last year was pretty telling. Send me your cell phone custom word lists and I will psychoanalyze you; for now, I’ll analyze my own. Some categories and conclusions—
Negative descriptive words: argh, barf, capitulation, cheesy, chutzpah, clacking, clingy, clusterfuck, collosally, curmudgeon, debauched, debauchery, disrespected, diss, doppelganger, doubletalk, douchey, drinken, egotistical, epically, faintness, faux, gossipy, hipster, hipsters, huffy, hypochondriac, icky, loutish, masochistic, motherfucker, pissed, pissy, PMS, posey, pouty, roiling, scenesters, sheesh, shitty, shoesonwrong [sic], sleepily, slimeball, sloshy, sociopath, sociopathic, ‘spensive, staledating, stalkerish, sucky, tattling, tipsy, trollop, unaffordably, undateable, vindication, wimped
Conclusions: These words get used in field reports send to friends via text message while I’m out. I could be pouty, roiling with anger, huffy, collossaly or epically tipsy—especially if it’s some debauched thing where a loutish ex-boyfriend has showed up with a clingy new girl clacking around in stupid shoes, can you believe his chutzpah, drinks are unaffordably spensive, the other guys there are undateable, etc—it was a clusterfuck, and that’s why I wimped out. Capitulation or vindication?
Positive descriptive words:
doable, jammie, kindhearted, leotard, Marxist, mindfulness, modelling, munchie, utopian, vegan, veggie, yay, yum
Conclusions: Far fewer positive words than negative ones—might need to apply some positive-thinking mindfulness. Also, why am I so asinine? It’s like, Yum, vegan munchies, kindhearted Marxist snack-sharing, yay, did you like my leotard? Again, this smacks of Oberlin and is sort of vile. I apologize.
Let’s hang out:
liaising, RSVP’d, topfloor, brownstone, townhouse, arecibo (car service), cementing, brb, doin, BBQ, jammie, unwinding, munchie.
A lot of text messages are about making plans—this is not super interesting, just logistical. Why do I think topfloor is one word? What’s up with jammie? I don’t even know.
New York specific:
brownstone, Barnard, Bedford, Bronxville, Earthmatters, Eldridge, Freddy’s, Freddys, Gowanus, Gramercy, Habana, Idlewild, Iroquois, Montauk, NYer, Pelham, TNY, townhouse, Williamsburg, arecibo [car service], BAM, Barbes, Bowery, Broome, Bway, Delancey, Dumbo, Flatbush, Frankie’s, Glasslands, Gpt [Greenpoint], Havemeyer, Hawthorne, Oberlin, Pravda, schillers, scratcher, transitchek, Wburg, Wesleyan. Wooster, xstreet.
Conclusions: More or less a round-up of NYC and greater NY streets, neighborhoods, bars, and a couple of places to eat. Barnard, Oberlin, and Wesleyan are included here because 90 percent of people I know in New York went to Barnard/Columbia, Oberlin (me), or Wesleyan. I think this list is a little vile, like it sells me out kind of by placing me in my geographic/sociographic context, and also because so many of these are bars. (See also my on-going Google Map of “Every Bar in Brooklyn I’ve Ever Been To.”) Okay, whatever, I present this as a solipsistic sociological-linguistic document.
* “minor” text messages is a reference to a certain dude we know who bristled because he thought he was expected to send too many “minor emails”, meaning the “how was your day, did the job interview go well, do you want to eat risotto for dinner, did you see this funny youtube video” variety that boyfriends might send to girlfriends. Or vice versa. (“Minor” in the same sense of the author’s minor works of literature. And to his credit, this guy does write excellent “major” emails.) Minor emails and texts: nice and relationship affirming, but M & I are more prone to date the guys who flat-out just don’t respond to your text messages because it goes against their “sense of free will” as one guy explained it to me once.
