The Four-eyed Journal » SMS

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.

Globe’s new unlimited SMS service rates upsets users

jhay — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 12:27:59 +0000

I only heard of the new pricing scheme Globe has implemented for their unlimited SMS service or “UNLIMITXT” this afternoon when my fellow Lasallian volunteers showed me an SMS message that says the following:

ATTENTION!!!
We are asking for your cooperation as a Globe subscriber!
Globe UNLIMITXT SERVICE is now worse ever.
They are now implementing
P20/1 day
P40/2 days
& P80/4 days.
Pls don’t support their UNLIMITXT service as early as today until 2-3 weeks!
We want them to feel how rude they are in implementing such services!
Pls. pass!
Thank you!

As I arrived home from the university, I myself got the exact same message and still continue to receive it from others as I write this. It may sound offensive or others might misunderstand me for this, but I do not use Globe’s unlimited SMS service mainly because of the following factors:

My important contacts are split-even between Smart/Talk ‘n Text/Addict subscribers and Globe/Touch Mobile subscribers.
I’ve grown tired of relentlessly forwarding SMS quotes or spending hours upon hours sending and actually chatting via SMS. But if you’re a close friend or important person, I wouldn’t mind spending all my credits just to send you a message.
My school and non-school work has gotten reached the level that actual phone calls would do the job rather than sending an SMS message that might not be read, received or worse, misunderstood.

Okay, enough of me. The rest of the Globe subscribers who have loved the UNLIMTXT service are not happy. Well, at least the ones I know of, still I agree that the new rates are a bit too pricey. The most affected by these would be highschool students whom unlike the college-level Globe subscribers, are on a very tight budget. Before the new rates, all we need is just P10 (about $0.18) and we’re free to send as many SMS messages as humanly possible for the next 24 hours of your registration. Now, we must pay twice as much for us to enjoy the same service.

Will the new rates decrease the number of Globe’s UNLIMITXT subscribers? What do you think of the new rates? Will the call of a two to three week boycott of the service as mentioned in the circulating SMS message materialize? What would Globe say about all this?

Already, there’s an interesting string of feedback over at Pinoy.Tech.Blog

Update: The boycott campaign has now turned into a ‘rebellion’ as said on the latest version of the circulating SMS message:

THE GLOBE REBELLION!
Pls help our campaign to bring back the P15, P25, & P50 UNLIMITXT SERVICE.
We need 1 million messages to bring it back.
PLS PASS, DON’T DELETE!

I wonder how would we know if we have reached the 1 million mark? Still, I suppose it’s a worthy cause, a lot of friends who are Globe subscribers are already raging mad.

Spam TXT Messages

jhay — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 13:28:48 +0000

SPAM, or unsolicited messages, everyone using the Internet, owns a couple or more e-mail accounts, bloggers and webmasters just hate it, really hate it. That’s why a myriad of anti-spam software, measures, technologies and sheer human effort have been deployed to combat and get rid of it.

However, SPAM doesn’t only thrive as a pestilence in the cyberworld. Even the seemingly distant mobile world has already been invaded by it-well the Philippine mobile world that is.

Your in the middle of a meeting or class, your mobile phone vibrates, telling that you have just recieved a message and so you frantically dig for it inside your bag or pocket. Unlock the keypad with lightning fast reflexes and even without looking at it, feel like an eternity has passed before you could open the message. Your heart beats faster in anticipation of knowing who the sender is but all of this is thrown away shredded into pieces when all you read is the following: (just an example)

New Ring Tones available:
A1-Alphabet song
B1-Happy Birthday
C1-Halukay Spaghetti
Just enter the key code and send to 84513658461
P15/download

Badtrip! Some messages even take away Php 5.00 to Php 15.00 from your load even without you doing anything save for reading the screwed up SPAM txt message. I’m sure almost all of you has had this experience, some are milder some are really wierd but most definitely all of them are really annoying and a nuisance.

Mitos Garcia who wrote a letter concerning this issue to INQ7.net and so Mr Garcia. you’re not alone, there are millions of others who had to put up the annoying with the task of cleaning up spam txt messages every single time it takes up space in your inbox. He cries;

I’m tired of being harassed by the promo text messages of a mobile phone company. They just keep on coming, these unsolicited, unwanted and extremely annoying messages, such as those tasteless ringtones and faces of celebrities I don’t care about.

Like him, I also called up the customers service of my mobile provider and complained about this annoying and unsolicited text messages and all I got are empty promises. I still spend some time deleting worhtless unsolicited text messages. So the war rages on, us the paying subscribers against this unfair trade practice. This entry is my small contribution to this great movement of eliminating spam not only in the web but also in the mobile world.