S(upremely) M(essed-up) S(yntax)

As a writer AND a very busy person, I have two major quibbles with the popularity of text messaging.

On the one hand, I don't deny that it's affordable, convenient -- and yeah, most of the time, entertaining.

But I don't find it so funny when I start receiving lame, baffling, or offensive jokes written in short-cut gibberish. Nor when otherwise sensible, educated individuals start communicating with me in some unintelligible alien code -- even in emails or professional correspondence. It's not an exaggeration to claim that txt lingo is to blame for a large part of the recent deterioration of the proficiency level in both of our major languages. It's one thing to cram all that you want to say into 160 characters to save your last peso, and another to singlehandedly demolish all known rules of English grammar or perpetuate the misspellings, tangled syntax, and badly phrased code-switching common in colloquial Filipino. It's gotten to the point that National Artist for Literature Virgilio S. Almario felt the need to wear a t-shirt emblazoned with "wer n u? d2 n me" to one of our poetry workshops as a passionate protest against linguistic felonies.

My other axe to grind results directly from my two-year stint as a PR writer for one of the major telcos (I won't disclose which one, but if you happen to know my mobile number, you can make an accurate guess). I know that the trick now is to avail of all these "unlimited text" promos and other discount schemes in order to make the most of one's prepaid load. Unfortunately, I've gotten so fed up with memorizing the mechanics and activation syntax for all these promotional offers and plugging them into every press release I churn out, that I'd have seizures if I were ever forced to type them into my cellphone and send them to some four-digit number, only to spend the next two hours waiting for that elusive confirmation message. A year before I entered law school, I had to attend one of the NTC hearings that gave rise to the proliferation of these consumer baits. If I could have foreseen the resulting chaos, I might have trashed the place and ended the price war right then and there.

Price regulation and free competition will always be major issues in any pervasive, mass-based technological medium. But the impact that these debates have on the political, social, and cultural fabric of this nation goes way beyond questions of economy or quality of service. On the bright side, though, even if the "m-commerce" model hasn't entirely taken off in the Philippines, selling prepaid load has proven to be a viable income-generating opportunity for many of our countrymen. One of my classmates has recently gotten himself a retailer SIM, and is aggressively advertising his new business among all our batch mates. I've become a willing customer during emergencies, and I'm actually considering getting one of those money-making little cards myself. So if you ever need to reload in a hurry, I'm just a txt away =)