A short history of SMS trends: from porno to emo to Inday

jhay — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 01:30:11 +0000

I’m not sure whether the Philippines is still the texting or SMS capital of the world, but I have doubts that another country has been given that title. All thanks to our mobile phones and the short-messaging system or SMS or texting as we refer to it here in the Philippines.

Just like music and fashion, texting or sending SMS has gone through various ‘trends’ over the past years. I recall back in my highschool days, the first time I owned a mobile phone, that thanks to SMS, ‘green’ or naughty jokes became the first staple of the SMS airwaves. Every hour or so, a friend or someone in my phone book would forward to me one of those naughty jokes. Some are plain naughty yet still funny (pardon my twisted sense of humor), but some were downright so naughty, it’s no longer a joke, but pornography. You’d be amazed that a few dozen dots, parentheses and backslashes could be arranged in a certain way so as to achieve a 3-second porn flick right in your palms.

3 girls make paalam to dad.

Girl 1: Dad, i’m going out with Pete to EAT.

Girl 2: I’m going out with Lance to DANCE.

Girl 3: I’m going out with CHUCK to …

Dad: Ah, hinde! Dito ka lang sa bahay!!!
Shet (>_<)

Thankfully, the Filipino texting community matured and moved on from sending those green jokes. Unfortunately, from being naughty and aroused by some fancy arrangement of backslashes and periods, it seems that everyone else that has a cellphone back then suddenly became either love struck or broken hearted, as the green jokes were replaced by, dare I say it, “love quotes.”

Love is when you sit beside someone…

doing nothing..

yet…

you still feel perfectly happpy…c:

Subjects varied from the search for true love, the longing for it, or the universal definition of it. Of course sending these ‘love quotes’ were most useful for those who were in search for romance or that significant other who would be the one forever, those who had a crush on somebody but couldn’t tell it their face and so the SMS world gave them safe refuge. At first this new trend was alright and peachy, heck even I had a wonderful collection of love quotes that would pinch the heart of anyone even the Ice Queen.

Nonetheless, it all went into excess and eventually, those love quotes became so full of love, sad love in fact, it become emo. Yep. Emo quotes. Scary I know.

“…the hardest part in being loved by someone is the uncertainty that it may stop

…anytime.”

Thank all things good as the texting community finally matured once more and moved on from there. Though there are still some emo texters but they’re not in the mainstream nowadays. At first, this new period saw the return of text jokes, the clean ones to be exact. The maturity of this period is quite impressive as the jokes soon became political jokes. The staple of which, are the jokes about former President, now ex-convict Joseph “Erap” Estrada. However, these jokes about Erap or Eraptions as they were labeled, were already popular before the advent of the texting or SMS craze. So this renewed interest in Erap jokes I’d like to call “Eraptions 2.0″ Thank God Bush wasn’t the real President of the Philippines otherwise we Filipinos could write whole new volumes of “Bushisms.”

Q: Biglang kumidlat, ano gagawin mo?

Genuis: Takip tenga, kukulog eh!

Playboy: Yakap syota, score e!

Astig: La lang, matapang ako e!

Erap: Ngingiti,

Picture taking eh!

Eraptions 2.0 soon died down and eventually replaced by an even bigger phenomenon that owed its rise to such levels to the cellphone, let’s hear it one more time: “Hello, Garci?”

The Mafia in Malacañang succeeded in keeping its skin and the issue soon toned down. Nonetheless, it was replaced by jokes related to GMA, her evil deeds, her being a midget, her teeth and who could forget, her mole.

“Tandaan mo anak, ang batang sinungaling ay di na tatangkad, uusli ang ngipin, liliit ang binti at tutubuan ng nunal sa mukha.”

-Diosdado Macapagal

Since the evil midget is still in Malacañang, this new level of the texting community’s maturity was eventually channeled to other issues of the time. Of course, since it is Filipino-made, humor, if not biting sarcasm, is an essential element to this new breed of text messages.

The following specimen below, I belive will sum it all:

Sa resto:

Waiter: Ano po order nila, maam?

Amo: Ung fried chicken meal na lang. Ikaw inday, ano sayo?

Inday: I would like to partake of a dish of sauteed pork and chicken, boiled in thick essence of soy and cane extracts, with copious amounts of garlic, onion and laurel, sprinkled generously with fine spices and served with a generous helping of root crop and a helping of rice.

Amo: Iho, adobo w/ rice daw.

Quite amazing the evolution of SMS communication here in the Philippines is. All thanks to the cell phone another remarkable fact has has been realized, SMS or texting has become part of the fabric of daily living faster than using the internet and say blogging as almost everyone from every age group owns a mobile phone.

I wonder what would be the next trend in the SMS culture in this country. With the roll-out and slow introduction of 3G and HSDPA technologies, the possibilities would be endless.

Just how much are you addicted to blogging?

jhay — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 15:00:19 +0000

Got this from Yuga, bloggers have been taking this test so I finally decided to take one myself and the result is something I find quite shocking.

92%How Addicted to Blogging Are You?

I haven’t been able to blog regularly this past few weeks and still I scored very high on this test? There’s really “more than meets the eye.”

Maybe this would be a good self-motivator to really blog like I used to before and bring some life back to this blog and the other blogs I write for.

How about you? How much are you addicted to blogs and blogging? Find out here.

Don’t be shy to share the results!

The Four-eyed Journal » addiction

A short history of SMS trends: from porno to emo to Inday

Just how much are you addicted to blogging?