Mourning the loss social media wrought

I have always been an old-school kind of a girl. I've been called an old soul even when I was a young 'un. And, lately, I think the evidence is piling up.

I miss the days when people spoke in complete sentences, said, "Good morning" and asked, "How are you?" Now, I know it's been years -- if it ever happened -- since people who asked how someone is doing actually waited for a reply. In many cases -- probably most -- it was more of an expression, but at least, it was a complete expression. Now, not only do we not wait for a reply; we don't even ask. We don't even care. We don't even pretend to care. The younger folks may not even remember the time when people asked, cared or pretended to care.

We have lost so much in this texting/social media/280-character-limit culture.

I always thought I was pretty hip, you know? I could respectably keep up with the teenagers and 20-somethings. I was the middle school "cool" teacher, after all, and you know how that goes. Working with that age manages to keep you young -- while simultaneously aging you. It's an amazing talent they possess! Now that I am no longer in the classroom, it takes a little more effort to keep up. I'm still rather "with it," but I admit there are expressions I run into that require a Google search to decipher. Then, there are the expressions I know, but I find that knowing them doesn't make me like them. I love being down to earth and relatable, yes. I'm no stick in the mud. But I also love language and mourn its loss.

For some reason, I don't mind "SMH" and "LOL." They seem innocuous enough. But other terms just grate on me. Maybe some of these bug you, too, or maybe you have a few to add to the list.

"PTL." Does that sound familiar? If anything should be written out in its entirety, it seems "praise the Lord" would be it.

"GBU." It stands for "God bless you." Actually, I think it stands for "I want God to bless you, but I don't have time to write out those three -- long? -- words."

Let's not forget "TY" and "Thx." These mean "I'm grateful for what you did, but it's too much trouble to say all that." I don't even like "thanks." I find "thank you" more sincere and expressive of gratitude. "Thanks" just screams, "I'm lazy!"

I know: All this is petty. None of it matters much, and I actually do mean this to be light-hearted, not some war on acronyms and abbreviations, though I believe it speaks to a larger cultural issue, so humor me, okay?

Let's get back to "Good morning." Rather, let's get back to the lack of "Good morning" and other greetings with which some don't bother.

In our current culture, many professions require extensive online interaction -- often exclusively. Still, I greet people with a "Good morning," "Good day" or "Hello" in the first communication of the day. It confounds me that most do not respond in kind. People just "don't have time" for "niceties," as they deem it. I deem it common courtesy. It goes along with other respectful behavior I was taught as a child: "When you walk into a room, speak," for example, and an "Everybody Loves Raymond" scene where Robert reprimands Raymond by saying, "You see, it's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice!" My philosophy is if we're too busy to "be nice," we're simply too busy -- and no one is so important as to be exempt from this -- personal delusion be darned.

And this one takes the cake -- when people on social media send a private message asking for a favor, and they jump right in, saying, "Do you think you can..." My thought is, "How about a 'Hello' or a 'How are you?' before you ask me for whatever I now -- because of your approach -- don't feel like doing?"

Again, with all that's going on in the world, this is trivial, certainly nothing earthshattering, but even non-earth shattering things rock our world, reminding us how nonsensical we have become and how much things have changed. In recent years, we have developed exponentially as a society as we've learned to boot up our computers and phones; email, text, Facebook, Twitter and more have done wonders, but they have also done damage in some areas where we could use a reboot: connection, courtesy, compassion and just old-fashioned communication.

Adrienne Ross is owner of Adrienne Ross Communications and a former Southeast Missourian editorial board member. Contact her at aross@semissourian.com.