“Their stylized, mannered projections of self are as invented as any in a novel. There are regional differences, of course, to the mannerisms but there are certain common tics: Okayyyyyyyyy. Ahhhhhhh. Everything is extreme: So-and-so “is obsessed with.” So-and-so “just had the longest day EVERRRRRR.” They are in a perpetual high pitch of pleasure or a high pitch of crisis or sometimes just a high pitch of high pitch. Holden Caulfield might have called it “phoniness.”

A 14-year-old I talked to about this sent me a message that pretty much sums it up: “I write more enthusiastically on Facebook than I actually am in real life. Like if I see something remotely funny I might say ‘HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA,’ when really there is no expression on my face.” … One of the other great adolescent poses of Facebook is irony at all times. So if you say, “can’t wait for the Lady Gaga concert,” you might add “lol” or you might say “Hey you are at camp and I’m in England, but I just wanted to let you know that I miss youuuu hahaha” to make it clear that you are not really looking forward to anything or expressing an actual emotion in a way that might be overly earnest or embarrassing.

Many, especially slightly older teenagers, seem to like to parody the Facebook norms even as they embrace them. The idea is that you are pretending to speak in the common language of Facebook, and are in fact speaking in that common language, but are aware of how unoriginal you are being; so when you write “omg” you are ironically commenting on the use of “omg,” but when other people write “omg” they are seriously saying “oh my God.” This very delicate balancing act is artful, in its way. Your character is now employing the clichés of the genre, but with satire, or maybe that would be satirrrrrrrrrre. (NYT)”

hautepop: Market researchers doing semantic analysis of teenagers’ online expression may well need to be aware of this effect. Teens’ conversations may score highly for emotional content, but that doesn’t exactly mean there’s much feeling there.

(Interestingly this is very different to how I communicated online as a teen, which was all-lowercase with a kind of emotional blankness plagiarised from early Brett Easton Ellis novels. I hope that kind of teenage sociolect hasn’t completely been superseded by the kind of American typographic hysteria described above; I’ve still a soft spot for portentous ellipses that gesture at something further unspoken and unspecific like a black-clad shoulder shrug…)

((Where’s the smiley for ‘ever-so-slightly tongue in cheek’ when you need it?))