Don't know. Don't care. Playing games about hidden meanings gets me to stop texting you.
this post was submitted on 20 Dec 2025
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Why so angry?
/s
I'm tired of people reading text from me, interpreting emotions that don't exist, then getting mad at me for it.
I don't like your sarcastic attitude
Lol
What do you mean by that
How dare you
First of all, how dare you! Second of all, what give you the right? And third of all, who do you think you are?
They're ripcord, show some respect!
The last time I was dating someone, she texted me to ask if we were still on for our date the next day. I replied with a thumbs up emoji and some additional text saying I was excited about seeing her again.
When we got together for the date, she asked if I was mad at her about something. I didn't understand, so I asked why she would think that. She explained that the thumbs up emoji is used as a passive aggressive insult now.
👍
If we mix OP and your comment together:
👍.
Is violently aggressive
She explained that the thumbs up emoji is used as a passive aggressive insult now.
That sounds exhausting. If my friends start interpreting thumbs up that way, I'll just have to get new friends.
Edit: None of my business what someone else accepts in their friend circle.
I think she picked it up from her students. She's a professor at a university, so is hooked in a little bit more to the Gen Z culture. Unfortunately she can't just replace her students, as much as she'd like to sometimes 🙂
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Reading in emotions to text to such an extent that normal punctuation is seen as a negative is rather juvenile.
No need to yell 😖
Where I live Hahaha is kind of sarcastic and rude, ahahaha is like a cool and sincere lol.
What general location is this??
Germany
Figures
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I'm glad that full stops are now passive aggressive, because that's been my intent all along.
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I think it is honestly really pathetic that so many of you claim to love language and yet what you really love is having a rigid form of interaction that you can shame people for not perfectly following or reacting intuitively to.
Language is ALWAYS a negotiation, if you dismiss people that interpret your sentences without a period as passive-aggressive, YOU are the one that loses because you have undermined the basic premise of communicating with others in favor of the comforting idea that there are a perfect set of unchanging abstract rules that can be applied to communication that delineate a "correct" way to do things.
There are no rules to language, language is not decided by a committee, language is a living breathing thing that does not give a fuck about your condescending attempt to lock it in stone and direct it towards being used as a tool to shame others with.
You don't get to decide what people react to and don't react to in your language.
Oddly enough, I don't claim to really love language for the sake of language, but it's pretty useful in my day to day so I try to use it well. I like your post, so, in the spirit of negotiation let's use the term baseline instead of rules.
The bulk of educational and informational works on the English language gives us a kind of baseline for our written language. When someone deviates from that baseline, most of the time we can still understand them because we can see how it differs and can infer their intent based on context and that baseline.
The dictionaries, style guides, and grammar texts that give us our baseline exist to facilitate written communication, not stifle it. They're the result of hundreds of years of these kinds of negotiations, not just arbitrary choice as so many people claim. Good grammar isn't just a cudgel to beat the creativity out of kids, it's the benefit of centuries worth of experience and study. Just as new ideas shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, we also shouldn't disregard past practice simply on the basis of it's age.
Baselines do change. But it's a slow process, not every popular new deviation will stand the test of time, and many antique forms are still present in our modern language. Think of it like scientific progress. Some ideas are validated by experimentation, others are proven wrong. Our understanding of the universe is more complex now than centuries ago, but there are still numerous constants that have been proven time after time. Our language has grown more complex too, but that doesn't mean that some very old ideas about how to communicate in writing aren't still useful today.
But you're very, very right about shame and reactions, and I'd be dishonest not to admit that. It's too easy for armchair grammarians to treat language as if it exists in a logic vacuum separate from human emotion, and that's simply not the case.
Omitting a period from a text isn't a crime, I freely admit that I'm often a grumpy old asshole about this sort of thing when I shouldn't be, and you're 100% correct that people shouldn't be shamed over it.
At the same time, the reverse is also true. Not every plea for punctuation and grammar is creative or ideological tyranny, and if some people react poorly to a text that omits punctuation, that's not something the author has a say in either.
At any rate, I hope this comes of as intended, a genuine, if overly lengthy explanation from someone who supports the widespread use of punctuation, and not just Grandpa Simpson yelling at a cloud. =)
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There's actually a name for people who perceive proper punctuation as being passive aggressive. They're called "morons."
Edit: in the name of further research I asked my wife, who is a non-punctuation texter, what she thought about this. Here's what I got.
Results of Conversation with Mrs. jubilationtcornpone
Me: "If someone sent you a message that had a period at the end, would you think they were angry with you?"
Her: "Like now? No. When I was younger? Yes."
Me: "Why would you think that when you were younger?"
Her: "Hmmm. I don't really know. I guess because women tend to read between the lines, even if there's nothing there. And because people like to have something to complain about and little miscommunications are an easy target."
Me: "Ok. So why doesn't it bother you now?"
Her: "Probably because I met you and you always use punctuation. You know ? She knows when he's mad at her just based on specific words he uses in texts or just the way he says something."
Me: "So if you start using punctuation, I should be concerned?"
Her: "Like if I say "I'm fine." With a period and everything?"
Me: "Yes."
Her: "Yeah. That means I'm not fine."
Me: "That's a lot of pressure to put on a period."
Her: "True."
Me: "But you already know I'm going to infer nothing from that. I probably won't even notice."
Her: "Yeah. I know. That's why l would just tell you."
Me: "Fair enough."
Her: "You're just one of those people who says exactly what they mean. There's no cryptic message or anything."
Me: "That's what I'm talking about!"
Her: "It is kind of nice actually."
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🙂 is only sent by psychopaths who are already planning out your murder
If absolutely necessary use 🙃 or 🤗 instead
Upside down smiley is used as like a smile-through-the-pain, everything is fucked kind of reaction, similar to melty smiley. Similarly the blushing smiley is usually deployed ironically. Or maybe my friends are just really sarcastic haha
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I still send =), =D, and =P.
I'll just go ahead and get in my coffin now.
omg, you use = for eyes, you sick fuck?
I know. I have a problem. =(
Oh I should totally start reusing these! Thanks =D
Perhaps related, but when communicating over the radio (including via digital printing modes like RTTY) you have to declare that you're done transmitting and yield the frequency to the other party. This is because your signal may fade, appearing to the other person like you stopped transmitting. This is the purpose of the ubiquitous "over" seen in movies and TV, though in ham circles you use the more casual "go ahead" or "back to you".
I imagine a period sends the same message, but because you don't have to manage turn-taking with texts the way you do on the radio the period can be seen as redundant because they already know you're done speaking. So sending a period may seem like you're emphasizing the finality of your message.
In radio, you signal the end of a contact (QSO) with "out", but again, in ham circles you just say "73".
Is any of this relevant? I have no idea I've been up since 1 AM this morning.
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So "full stop" means a Period, right? A period is a period, PERIOD. That's all it is. It ends a sentence, so you start a new one. It doesn't contain any emotional ammunition. It certainly isnt passive aggressive, that's just stupid.
What's next? Are we going to start debating the tyranny of the comma, or the righteous indignation of the semi-colon?
Or maybe we should be debating the infiltration of our written communications by Big Emoji? They're obviously behind all of this, trying to encourage more emoji use, to stuff their coffers with that sweet emoji revenue.
Calm the fuck down, people.
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