My Communication Technology history

Technology has played a huge part in my growing up.
I remember being in year seven and all the cool girls were talking about what their MSN addresses were (surfer_babe91, roxygal1, monkey_moo). I pretended to know exactly what they were talking about.

But a year later I was on the band wagon (blonde-as-pie) and chatting to everyone in my grade, from what I remember the conversation was pretty limited:
“Wats ur top 5?” = Who do you find to be the 5 most attracive gentlemen in our cohort? (There was a silent rule that you always put the boy that you fancied third)
“Hav u dun ur English asgmt?”= Apparently it didn’t help them
That’s about it really. I never got into the whole rANd0M C4pt0l l3tt4Rs N nUm83Rs craze.

One major thing about using things like msn, bebo and MySpace so young was that it was how you talked to the opposite sex. It became an easy way for guys to ask out the girl “do u wanna go out wiv me?” and usually, that’s where the relationship stayed-
Boy-“Hey babe”
Girl-“hi cutie”
Boy- “hru?”
Girl- “gud n u?”
Boy- “same. The wave u gave me across da courtyard todai was nice”
Girl-“anything for u :)”
Boy- “luv you”
Girl-“lu2”

Privacy wasn’t really an issue as you only added people you knew and on the odd occasion when a stranger did add you, it was only a matter of time until you blocked them. Someone asking “ASL” repeatedly gets rather tedious.
However I do have one friend whom I have never met in person- Scott lives in New South Wales however, I met him through a real-life friend and I’ve known him so long he doesn’t seem like a stranger at all, more like an old family friend who calls occasionally to check in.
These days I find MSN depresses me, something about sitting at home waiting for old school friends to strike up some standard conversation about what I’m studying and what I did on the weekend just doesn’t seem worth it.