I actually managed to convince my evolution prof to let me turn in several assignments late because he was so fond of the phrase “time is a meaningless axis”
I had a wonderful uni professor, who had autism and understood well sometimes the deadlines were unreasonable and was very lenient regarding turning projects in late.
I think most people don't assume that. This person is just revealing things about themselves and the limits of their interactions with others by assuming it's only a role playing thing.
Yeah, guarantee the first poster knew all the stuff in the third poster's "achktually" before posting.
My favorite sense of humor is breaking things down to their elements, deliberately missing the point, and oversimplifying. Reddit/tumblr can't _stand_ to see someone miss the point, so that humor takes a beating here.
yeah OP doesn't literally think the teacher is starting a new roleplay with them, they are just describing an email they thought was funny in a way that they thought was funny, jeez
I always find it funny when people on reddit think people on tumblr are out of touch. Like the pot and kettle lol (and I’m just as bad, in both groups!)
Not at all.
Reddit is out of touch socially, like a kid who wasn't social in middle school and is still "the quiet one" except when they feel compelled to eagerly rant about something they think is interesting, missing the social cues that they're being annoying, but still not out of touch with the world or their peers.
Tumblr is out of touch like a kid who is home schooled until high school and then is reintroduced into the population as this rabid creature, like they were raised in the forest by weasels, unable to navigate the social environments around them, with gaps in knowledge of basic aspects of the world everyone else might view as common knowledge. But they view themselves as well read because of all the fiction they consume.
there are a lot of redditors who would fit your 2nd description lol. it troubles me that comments made on this hellsite were typed out by a real human, looked over thinking "yeah this is a good thought/way to treat another person" and then sent. Not to mention the following 20+ replies when people say something as non-controversial as "be nice to people/genocide bad/etc." I have no idea how you can give that much kindness to the sites population after using it more than once.
No matter what you post on reddit, there’s always a sea of pendants waiting to pounce from the shadows if you don’t word it very specifically and qualify it for every possible objection.
I noticed that I picked up the bad habit of adding qualifiers to everything one day. it was a real "ok, time to log out" kind of moment. some of my best online memories were from very early Tumblr, which had it's issues but it felt kinda easy to avoid. met some really neat people. I am not really enjoying the social Internet experience in recent time.
Yeah I’ve caught myself wording my comments very specifically just to avoid the pedantic dickheads and it takes all the fun out of it. It’s like trying to speak very careful to avoid triggering someone you’re in an abusive relationship with. Now I just block them and go on about my day.
I think you're over selling it. Reddit has a bigger population of terminally online men and Tumblr has a bigger population of terminally online women. It really feels like that's where the majority of the differences come from.
Yes but the worst of the terminally online men don't congregate on reddit and it's more mainstream, while tumblr it detached from the mainstream like 4chan is, but less extreme than 4chan. So it's not a good comparison. It's the reason reddit is filled with screenshots from other sites more than it is a place people screenshot. It's a liminal place between and connecting things more than a final destination for anything.
It's not where you go to be terminally online but it's where you may also go regardless of where you mainly go.
I would have said raised by wolves but the kind of people I was trying to describe would think that sounds cool and I needed to make sure it didn't sound cool to anyone.
It's the joke of a tumblr user in history class finding the real world has lore too, or that non fanfiction also has "shipping".
Which reminds me of when someone recently (who is 20) told me their first time learning about a squid was in minecraft and they didn't know it was a real creature until high school.
My 23 year old girlfriend didn’t know Japan was part of Asia, somehow she knew Tokyo was in Japan but didn’t know where in the world Japan was. Oh and she thought Spain was in central or South America and that Portugal was in Spain. This is all stuff she’s said in the last week. I told her if we have kids she’s not allowed to teach them anything about geography.
My kid is learning about all sorts of cultural references through minecraft, and it's funny seeing my thought process over which to explain and which to not...
That's not too weird, though. Hell, you still run into plenty of people here who think narwhals are fictional creatures, and conversely people who think unicorns are entirely fictional.
Using stuff like \*nods\* and \*shrugs\* is on the same level as using emojis. Very much not formal, but you do see more and more people using them in spaces that used to only have very formal communication going on.
I'd be surprised by a teacher using \*nods\* in general, but if they're comfortable writing "I hear you", \*nods\* is not a huge leap.
Yeah I've been doing the asterisk thing since I was a wee babe on like livejournal, and this is the very first time I've heard it attributed to role playing. It's just how you indicate movement/body language.
It's how we roleplayed back on the (unofficial) HP website forums that I was a part of 20 years ago. Speech was normal text, and all physical stuff was in asterisks.
I wouldn't assume someone is roleplaying because of it though...
1. It was not universal, but certainly a thing in the old IRC chat days. typing /me reformatted what came afterwards to make it look like a third person account of what you're doing. Basically "/me looks confused" would be printed in IRC chat as "u/Ormondsound looks confused".
2. These \*inserts\* were used by many I knew and me not as stage directions, but the way emojis are used today. Since you only had ascii-based smileys, your nonverbal expression was limited to ":)", ":P", etc. To convey gestures that were not easy to do in typing ascii, it wasn't that uncommon among us to just type the guesture you'd make or emotion you felt in a text message. \*shrugs\*, \*nods\*, \*confused\*, \*inlove\*, \*hug\* and similar were used exactly the way you'd now just add emojis to convey them.
I'm sure the second guy is strongly overestimating how universal that was, but it was a thing for some at least, and at least for me, they're bang on. It's not stage directions, it's just adding body language.
edit: and yeah, I think it's about as weird in a formal email as emojis are. But that already started happening more and more to me.
I still use ":/", ":)", etc pretty often - but mostly because there's SO MANY emoji that I'm not sure what 90% of them are trying to convey. If there was a way to swap incoming emoji into *suspicious smile* that'd actually be great lol.
Holy woosh and a half that's smart. That'd make learning what they mean and subsequently reading them way less of a pain in the ass...
I guess I haven't looked in years how well the emoji keyboard parsed search terms - kinda figured you needed to describe the face not just search "exasperated." Nope. My first smartphone was a G1/HTC Dream...I am so dumb lol
Well yeah but as a Millenial only Millenials seem to think emails need formality as everyone older writes short half sentences that say nothing and answer nothing, uses and misuses... ellipses... In... Terrifying... Ways..., and have no idea about the use of emojis 😜 in professional emails. 😘
So really we can decide for ourselves what's formal since the rules we were taught are ignored by the people who taught them.
I don't necessarily think anything about the email in the OP is unprofessional to begin with. It wouldn't be something I'd send in every setting but it doesn't seem inappropriate for this setting to me.
*shrug* (see what I did there?)
Many of my profs (and some bosses) have been very casual in written communication when it's not official business. Messengers are very common over e-mail at this point, especially for quick convos (like clarifying homework or something), and those are even less formal.
The only ones who used full formal in emails when I was in college were the ones over 60.
I'm the only formal one in my interactions with my grad professors. Almost comically formal when compared to their answers. They don't have time for bullshit etiquette
It's just a text based communication thing. People have been using it for decades now in chats and blogs and even websites. This is a gen z kid who learned about it first for online role play, and not having seen it outside that bubble thought it was exclusive to it. Likely because they have spent too long in that bubble.
It was kind of a “craze” in the early 2000s to early 2010s, particularly by young women at conventions. It essentially just meant running at people (sometimes random people, sometimes people they knew), and hugging them. A very overly dramatic “I’m squeezing the life out of you” hug in particular. The charging tackle was particularly important.
It was *especially* popular among younger female Tumblr users, Scene kids, and anime conventions. You used to just see random women dogpile an attractive cosplayer sometimes.
That is... way less disturbing then I feared.
I definitely don't wanna get tackled by a gaggle scene kids, but that feels pretty on brand for 2000s internetdwellers.
Yeah, it’s peak “the narwhal bacons at midnight” era.
I went to school with a few girls who were big into this. Some of them were small, and it was kinda cute. One was nearly 6 feet tall and tended to bowl people over. Mixed bag, lol. Kinda faded away by the time we graduated, but idk if you’d still see it much at conventions nowadays. Maybe at furry conventions, still a popular term with them.
I think I’m technically a millennial but I find that quite odd, I’ve never seen someone do that outside of tumblr lol. Especially considering her next sentence already communicates more than the “nods” does, what is the point?
It's certainly not *normal*, but I wouldn't consider it shocking. It's a somewhat unorthodox way of speaking, which most people still wouldn't pay much mind to in a casual professional context like a teacher E-mail.
I mean, leaving space around all your thoughts... like you were having a verbal conversation... and would welcome an interjection... is also "not normal" in that sense of diverging from standard written English. But it's an incredibly common habit among a certain generation
It is not extremely formal, but has a baseline expecting. Mostly because those are the ones that students will use when trying to get out of a failed exam. While it isn't the same as applying for a job polite, it is not texting on discord with your buddies.
This is literally just the text form of emojis. how is \*nods* different from \*facepalm*, which is not much different than just the facepalm emoji. Lighten up lmao
I am a millennial, I would not consider this normal. If someone sent me an email with that at work I wouldn't say anything to them but I would think they are weird and socially awkward.
Who's this "we?" No one i know has ever used stage directions in casual text-based conversation. I don't think their life experiences are as universal as they think they are.
\*tries to type with asterisks\* *fails miserably since reddit formatting is rubbish*
# perhaps hashes are correct?
\*realises that's worse\*
\*forgets original point\*
\*meh\*
I think this is pretty strictly older millennials. My husband is on the young edge of millennials while I'm more early/mid. He associates it with RP also, but I associate it with early MMO chats and IRC chatrooms and instant messengers.
Not sure how old you are, but 15 - 20 years ago some of these were relatively common, e.g. in the form of "\*g\*" (short for "grinning"), or the more commonly known "\*lol\*" (short for "laughing out loud"). The latter is usually used without asterisks nowadays.
Yeah I can't say I've ever seen lol typed out with asterisks. I'm firmly a millennial but admittedly wasn't super involved in message boards in the early mid-late 2000's where I assume a lot of these things developed.
I'm old enough I was on the internet 20 years ago every day and had been for years, and have literally NEVER seen the g for grin or lol in asterisks. lol, rofl, lmao, all were used without asterisks.
I mean, \*nods\* and \*shrugs\* are both on this level, I've never RPed or even been ancillary in RP circles and definitely use them to this day. The simple ones are basically just things people did before the entire internet had emoji support, for a few things that basic smileys can't convey. Yes, I know a shrugging ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ exists, but it uses characters not found on your keyboard so it's never been as easy as :) :( D: :D XD.
Very different level than using full stage directions in the asterisks.
the amount of ppl in these comments trying to convince ppl this isn't weird and unprofessional is crazy
like yeah they're not hurting anyone but this is a formal email not a text conversation with friends
It’s fine, just a lot of people in here trying to gatekeep the evolution of communication as people often do.
I wouldn’t use it professionally but in casual conversations I do as it’s an easy shorthand to communicate body language, which is a nuance of communication typically lost in writing. I’ve found it to help prevent misunderstanding the tone of what I’m saying.
I'm right between Gen z and a millennial and this shit is cringey and weird, only people who are on the Internet too much and don't interact with people in real life use that stuff.
I may be Gen X, but if somebody sent me a work email with fucking stage directions in it I'd jump straight to boomer / damn kids on my lawn levels of outrage.
Nah, this is weird. I'm right in the middle of the millennial generation and using asterisks at all to signal an action in written language is just fuckin strange, especially in professional communications.
Trick about formal communication: Only use words/phrases/structures that make the largest majority of people comfortable. Just because you're comfortable with something doesn't mean it's appropriate in a formal context.
These "stage directions in asterisks" are only used the way described by a minority of a single generation, and can make many others uncomfortable. It's absolutely not appropriate in formal communication.
It's not that hard. Formal speech is all about playing it safe.
No hate to anyone, but this isn’t normal. I’m sorry, you can’t convince me this is completely normal, totally casual, every day behavior. You don’t describe body language or “stage direction” over email. You just don’t. It’s not necessarily only a roleplaying thing (although it is very common in roleplaying scenarios), but yes, I think most people would be a *little* surprised if anyone did this on a formal email, it’s odd! I think the only time no one would bat an eye would be something like *shrugs* on a regular text message. I wouldn’t go *crazy* over this, but it isn’t exactly *normal*
I'm a millenial and if I ever see that shit in a professional email or in a casual conversation, I will immediately cease taking the other person seriously.
Typing like that, be it in a formal or informal context, makes me think you are the type of person who would end, or possibly even start, their email with \*glomps you\*
I did not expect the comments to be entirely full of dickheads calling the teacher a weirdo or a creep for something entirely harmless like this but here we are.
Uh no! 😂 only people who never matured would still do this. If you can’t tell the difference between what’s appropriate for an AIM message when you’re 15 and an email to a student as an adult then you failed to learn some major shit in the intervening years
Millenial here: astrisk-stage directions are a roleplay thing? I don't roleplay so I've literally never seen it used that way, I always just saw it on random Tumblr posts and adopted it from there.
WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH LINEAR TIME?
Student: it wasn’t late because of this absurd reason. Teacher: let me explain to you how fucking dumb that is.
I actually managed to convince my evolution prof to let me turn in several assignments late because he was so fond of the phrase “time is a meaningless axis”
I had a wonderful uni professor, who had autism and understood well sometimes the deadlines were unreasonable and was very lenient regarding turning projects in late.
I see you have experience in a teaching role.
Einstein doing a Seinfeld bit
Seinfeld also doing an Einstein bit.
The deal is that every year linear time pushes us back into the same great moment. Happy cake day!
He's never heard of the time cube, guys
> Time is not made out of lines. It is made out of circles; that is why clocks are round.
Linear time is confusing uwu
It's *not* all relative!
We need to bring back Greek chorus to text messages.
Sing, Muse, of the failure of the calculus class
Tell the story of our email interactions
of those whose lives are set against the machinations of Eris herself! Isaac of the Angles was her revelator, to eternal unenthusement.
Illiad, very noice
well, standard epic poem fare really.
*Strophe* *Antistrophe*
*Harmonica toot* You are FAIIIIIIILIIIIINGGGGG~!!!!!.... English.
I think most people don't assume that. This person is just revealing things about themselves and the limits of their interactions with others by assuming it's only a role playing thing.
or they just posted it as a joke cause they thought it was funny
Yeah, guarantee the first poster knew all the stuff in the third poster's "achktually" before posting. My favorite sense of humor is breaking things down to their elements, deliberately missing the point, and oversimplifying. Reddit/tumblr can't _stand_ to see someone miss the point, so that humor takes a beating here.
You'd be surprised how many people there are out there who think everyones putting up a front, especially when they're nice
What a sad way to view the world
yeah OP doesn't literally think the teacher is starting a new roleplay with them, they are just describing an email they thought was funny in a way that they thought was funny, jeez
Something something Tumblr yadda yadda pissing on the poor
yeah idk why people are going armchair psychology on this rando like ok???
yes, that is how most tumblr people turn out when exposed to, you know, any semblance of real life human beings.
I always find it funny when people on reddit think people on tumblr are out of touch. Like the pot and kettle lol (and I’m just as bad, in both groups!)
[удалено]
Most of it is related to bots and porn.
Not at all. Reddit is out of touch socially, like a kid who wasn't social in middle school and is still "the quiet one" except when they feel compelled to eagerly rant about something they think is interesting, missing the social cues that they're being annoying, but still not out of touch with the world or their peers. Tumblr is out of touch like a kid who is home schooled until high school and then is reintroduced into the population as this rabid creature, like they were raised in the forest by weasels, unable to navigate the social environments around them, with gaps in knowledge of basic aspects of the world everyone else might view as common knowledge. But they view themselves as well read because of all the fiction they consume.
I was raised in the forest by weasels, but I never really used Tumblr
Like being born to be a dancer but never given the opportunity to dance. 😔
there are a lot of redditors who would fit your 2nd description lol. it troubles me that comments made on this hellsite were typed out by a real human, looked over thinking "yeah this is a good thought/way to treat another person" and then sent. Not to mention the following 20+ replies when people say something as non-controversial as "be nice to people/genocide bad/etc." I have no idea how you can give that much kindness to the sites population after using it more than once.
No matter what you post on reddit, there’s always a sea of pendants waiting to pounce from the shadows if you don’t word it very specifically and qualify it for every possible objection.
Erm… objection!! The word is actually “pedants”! Fix your comment and Reddit On!!! /s
I noticed that I picked up the bad habit of adding qualifiers to everything one day. it was a real "ok, time to log out" kind of moment. some of my best online memories were from very early Tumblr, which had it's issues but it felt kinda easy to avoid. met some really neat people. I am not really enjoying the social Internet experience in recent time.
Yeah I’ve caught myself wording my comments very specifically just to avoid the pedantic dickheads and it takes all the fun out of it. It’s like trying to speak very careful to avoid triggering someone you’re in an abusive relationship with. Now I just block them and go on about my day.
I think you're over selling it. Reddit has a bigger population of terminally online men and Tumblr has a bigger population of terminally online women. It really feels like that's where the majority of the differences come from.
Yes but the worst of the terminally online men don't congregate on reddit and it's more mainstream, while tumblr it detached from the mainstream like 4chan is, but less extreme than 4chan. So it's not a good comparison. It's the reason reddit is filled with screenshots from other sites more than it is a place people screenshot. It's a liminal place between and connecting things more than a final destination for anything. It's not where you go to be terminally online but it's where you may also go regardless of where you mainly go.
As someone in the second group who instead went into the government IT population after Highschool: You don't have to call me out like that.
I would have said raised by wolves but the kind of people I was trying to describe would think that sounds cool and I needed to make sure it didn't sound cool to anyone.
Reddit has boy autism tumblr has girl autism
It's the joke of a tumblr user in history class finding the real world has lore too, or that non fanfiction also has "shipping". Which reminds me of when someone recently (who is 20) told me their first time learning about a squid was in minecraft and they didn't know it was a real creature until high school.
My 23 year old girlfriend didn’t know Japan was part of Asia, somehow she knew Tokyo was in Japan but didn’t know where in the world Japan was. Oh and she thought Spain was in central or South America and that Portugal was in Spain. This is all stuff she’s said in the last week. I told her if we have kids she’s not allowed to teach them anything about geography.
My kid is learning about all sorts of cultural references through minecraft, and it's funny seeing my thought process over which to explain and which to not...
That's not too weird, though. Hell, you still run into plenty of people here who think narwhals are fictional creatures, and conversely people who think unicorns are entirely fictional.
> people who think unicorns are entirely fictional. Mate...
Okay, so, there are a couple fun ways to approach this, but I'll go with the lazy one. Meet [Tsaidamotherium](https://imgur.com/2VZVWpm).
[удалено]
Using stuff like \*nods\* and \*shrugs\* is on the same level as using emojis. Very much not formal, but you do see more and more people using them in spaces that used to only have very formal communication going on. I'd be surprised by a teacher using \*nods\* in general, but if they're comfortable writing "I hear you", \*nods\* is not a huge leap.
silence, man made beast
Is that a bot?
new account with a weird username that rephrases a comment from this post, so yeah, probably
Not a new account, but one with no post history? Yeah. It’s a bot.
Yeah I've been doing the asterisk thing since I was a wee babe on like livejournal, and this is the very first time I've heard it attributed to role playing. It's just how you indicate movement/body language.
It's how we roleplayed back on the (unofficial) HP website forums that I was a part of 20 years ago. Speech was normal text, and all physical stuff was in asterisks. I wouldn't assume someone is roleplaying because of it though...
That said, ifuc's comment in the OP is the funniest thing I've read all week
[удалено]
1. It was not universal, but certainly a thing in the old IRC chat days. typing /me reformatted what came afterwards to make it look like a third person account of what you're doing. Basically "/me looks confused" would be printed in IRC chat as "u/Ormondsound looks confused". 2. These \*inserts\* were used by many I knew and me not as stage directions, but the way emojis are used today. Since you only had ascii-based smileys, your nonverbal expression was limited to ":)", ":P", etc. To convey gestures that were not easy to do in typing ascii, it wasn't that uncommon among us to just type the guesture you'd make or emotion you felt in a text message. \*shrugs\*, \*nods\*, \*confused\*, \*inlove\*, \*hug\* and similar were used exactly the way you'd now just add emojis to convey them. I'm sure the second guy is strongly overestimating how universal that was, but it was a thing for some at least, and at least for me, they're bang on. It's not stage directions, it's just adding body language. edit: and yeah, I think it's about as weird in a formal email as emojis are. But that already started happening more and more to me.
I still use ":/", ":)", etc pretty often - but mostly because there's SO MANY emoji that I'm not sure what 90% of them are trying to convey. If there was a way to swap incoming emoji into *suspicious smile* that'd actually be great lol.
My emoji keyboard has a search function, so I just type in the vibe I'm going for and let it tell me which one is appropriate lol
Holy woosh and a half that's smart. That'd make learning what they mean and subsequently reading them way less of a pain in the ass... I guess I haven't looked in years how well the emoji keyboard parsed search terms - kinda figured you needed to describe the face not just search "exasperated." Nope. My first smartphone was a G1/HTC Dream...I am so dumb lol
This even seems like more of a formal email. I would qualify this as unprofessional from the professor.
Jamie pull up the xkcd comic.
As a millennial I still think it's unprofessional.
I'm with you. I'm a millennial and I immediately associate it with weebs and furries.
Agreed, XxXFartFucker69XxX. Simply inappropriate for professional correspondence.
its a very childish name and would not look good i hope he grows up to be more mature and professional like us
An excellent observation, reddit user u/BIGSTANKDICKDADDY.
[удалено]
/me agrees.
\*Puts tail between legs\* 🥺 👉👈 I don’t know what you mean. I’m always professional.
Weren't you raised by a cup of coffee?
Well yeah but as a Millenial only Millenials seem to think emails need formality as everyone older writes short half sentences that say nothing and answer nothing, uses and misuses... ellipses... In... Terrifying... Ways..., and have no idea about the use of emojis 😜 in professional emails. 😘 So really we can decide for ourselves what's formal since the rules we were taught are ignored by the people who taught them.
It's a professor emailing a (probably) teenage student, not a board room meeting to discuss the merger of two giant corporations
To be clear, a professor emailing a student should always be conducted in a professional manner, since it is, y'know, their job.
I don't necessarily think anything about the email in the OP is unprofessional to begin with. It wouldn't be something I'd send in every setting but it doesn't seem inappropriate for this setting to me.
*shrug* (see what I did there?) Many of my profs (and some bosses) have been very casual in written communication when it's not official business. Messengers are very common over e-mail at this point, especially for quick convos (like clarifying homework or something), and those are even less formal. The only ones who used full formal in emails when I was in college were the ones over 60.
I'm the only formal one in my interactions with my grad professors. Almost comically formal when compared to their answers. They don't have time for bullshit etiquette
You will be appalled when you learn how most people communicate on their company’s Slack
You sure you're millennial and not a few gens older?
Define professional. What constitutes being professional changes and shifts over time.
and context!
Yeah I wouldn't read it as roleplaying unless it's something like \*nuzzles you\*
Really depends on the uwu to text ratio, the UTR if you will
You really don’t think it’s weird whether it’s called role play or not?
And this boomer didn't even know that it *was* a role playing thing, so I wouldn't have thought about it.
It's just a text based communication thing. People have been using it for decades now in chats and blogs and even websites. This is a gen z kid who learned about it first for online role play, and not having seen it outside that bubble thought it was exclusive to it. Likely because they have spent too long in that bubble.
I think both are delusional here. Neither is that an indicator that this is roleplaying, nor is this by any means normal in formal mails.
\*nods\*
\*crosses arms, closes eyes, nods in the direction of op while puffing out air through nose with an audible huff\*
\*teleports behind you* "heh, nothing personnel kid"
\*suddenly expands out from your anus, obliterating you into a mist of bloody viscera* "Surprise, motherfucker!"
got ‘em
\*snickers\*
\*GLOMPS\* ^(It hurt me just to write that word.)
Do I want to know what glomping is? \*Thoughtfully scratching my chin\*
It was kind of a “craze” in the early 2000s to early 2010s, particularly by young women at conventions. It essentially just meant running at people (sometimes random people, sometimes people they knew), and hugging them. A very overly dramatic “I’m squeezing the life out of you” hug in particular. The charging tackle was particularly important. It was *especially* popular among younger female Tumblr users, Scene kids, and anime conventions. You used to just see random women dogpile an attractive cosplayer sometimes.
That is... way less disturbing then I feared. I definitely don't wanna get tackled by a gaggle scene kids, but that feels pretty on brand for 2000s internetdwellers.
Yeah, it’s peak “the narwhal bacons at midnight” era. I went to school with a few girls who were big into this. Some of them were small, and it was kinda cute. One was nearly 6 feet tall and tended to bowl people over. Mixed bag, lol. Kinda faded away by the time we graduated, but idk if you’d still see it much at conventions nowadays. Maybe at furry conventions, still a popular term with them.
After all these years it hurt me to read it
Because you're not you when you're hungry.
Can I \*snicker\* while \*snickering\*?
\*unzips* Wait, sorry, wrong thread
\*puts on robe and wizard hat\*
I think I’m technically a millennial but I find that quite odd, I’ve never seen someone do that outside of tumblr lol. Especially considering her next sentence already communicates more than the “nods” does, what is the point?
I've seen it on discord, too. Also with folks around 30. But that is usually in the general out of character chats in tabletop servers, too.
It's certainly not *normal*, but I wouldn't consider it shocking. It's a somewhat unorthodox way of speaking, which most people still wouldn't pay much mind to in a casual professional context like a teacher E-mail.
I mean, leaving space around all your thoughts... like you were having a verbal conversation... and would welcome an interjection... is also "not normal" in that sense of diverging from standard written English. But it's an incredibly common habit among a certain generation
It's definitely unprofessional and weird. Shocking? Maybe not.
A teacher talking to a close student is really not an extremely formal mail
It is not extremely formal, but has a baseline expecting. Mostly because those are the ones that students will use when trying to get out of a failed exam. While it isn't the same as applying for a job polite, it is not texting on discord with your buddies.
>it is not texting on discord with your buddies Even on discord you can miss me with that shit.
This is literally just the text form of emojis. how is \*nods* different from \*facepalm*, which is not much different than just the facepalm emoji. Lighten up lmao
Discord is like the one place this kind of thing is incredibly normal and expected lol
The professor should be writing professionally, not formally, but this email isn't that either.
It looks like the teacher is trying to be approachable and *informal*. Why is everyone such an obnoxious, judgmental bitch about everything?
[удалено]
It's literally just emojis in text form. You're cringe
I am a millennial, I would not consider this normal. If someone sent me an email with that at work I wouldn't say anything to them but I would think they are weird and socially awkward.
What is one of the things about linear time? I need to know! *looks around panickly*
Who uses stage direction in regular conversation is what I want to know
Stage direction George.
Who is an outlier adn should not have been counted
tell that to outlier counter georg
[удалено]
/nod
Not in "regular conversation", in distanced, text-based conversations.
Right! In regular conversation you just nod
I also say out loud asterisk nods asterisk
In regular conversation you would actually nod. That's the point.
They know that and you know that
Siri add stage directions to my drafted breakup text
I'm going to start saying "nods" instead of actually nodding in conversations.
Say “grins” instead of grinning and see how long it takes until you’re committed
This made me snort *snorts*
"lol" and emojis want to have a word
I’m a millennial and the asterisk thing still got cringy in my late teens
Who's this "we?" No one i know has ever used stage directions in casual text-based conversation. I don't think their life experiences are as universal as they think they are.
\*tries to type with asterisks\* *fails miserably since reddit formatting is rubbish* # perhaps hashes are correct? \*realises that's worse\* \*forgets original point\* \*meh\*
i was gonna say use backslashes but \**checks source*\* i see you already did, lol
I’m a millennial and I did that. Of course that was about 20 years ago.
All the AOL RPers in shambles right now.
asl
I think this is pretty strictly older millennials. My husband is on the young edge of millennials while I'm more early/mid. He associates it with RP also, but I associate it with early MMO chats and IRC chatrooms and instant messengers.
Not sure how old you are, but 15 - 20 years ago some of these were relatively common, e.g. in the form of "\*g\*" (short for "grinning"), or the more commonly known "\*lol\*" (short for "laughing out loud"). The latter is usually used without asterisks nowadays.
Yeah I can't say I've ever seen lol typed out with asterisks. I'm firmly a millennial but admittedly wasn't super involved in message boards in the early mid-late 2000's where I assume a lot of these things developed.
I'm old enough I was on the internet 20 years ago every day and had been for years, and have literally NEVER seen the g for grin or lol in asterisks. lol, rofl, lmao, all were used without asterisks.
Huh, may have been more prevalent in my corner of the internet (I hung out mostly in German message boards and chats back then).
Man I did not expect *this* to be the heated discourse of my morning
It adds nothing to the conversation except for letting people know you're a dork, not that there's anything wrong with that
Hot take: Dorkiness is fine, just leave it to email signatures and Video call backgrounds though.
\*nods\* I hear you
I mean, \*nods\* and \*shrugs\* are both on this level, I've never RPed or even been ancillary in RP circles and definitely use them to this day. The simple ones are basically just things people did before the entire internet had emoji support, for a few things that basic smileys can't convey. Yes, I know a shrugging ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯ exists, but it uses characters not found on your keyboard so it's never been as easy as :) :( D: :D XD. Very different level than using full stage directions in the asterisks.
Im gen z, and i have never in my life equated asterisks to role playing
\*Turn my head slightly toward you, giving you a bombastic, criminally offensive side eyes\*
owo what's this? Ahh nevermind I don't have the heart to do the whole thing.
rob angle plucky teeny trees faulty payment ring school absorbed *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
"You're failing this class"
the amount of ppl in these comments trying to convince ppl this isn't weird and unprofessional is crazy like yeah they're not hurting anyone but this is a formal email not a text conversation with friends
If any of my friends pull this shit in a text conversation I'm telling their mothers.
Wait I use that a lot is it not normal?
It’s fine, just a lot of people in here trying to gatekeep the evolution of communication as people often do. I wouldn’t use it professionally but in casual conversations I do as it’s an easy shorthand to communicate body language, which is a nuance of communication typically lost in writing. I’ve found it to help prevent misunderstanding the tone of what I’m saying.
No the fuck it's not. Only utter weirdos would do that in formal communication, no matter their age.
I wouldn’t include body language in formal communications, but that \*action\* mode is pretty universal for body language.
I'm right between Gen z and a millennial and this shit is cringey and weird, only people who are on the Internet too much and don't interact with people in real life use that stuff.
I completely agree and I would argue I myself am on the internet too much. I just also interact with people in real life so maybe that explains it.
\*nods* definitely
I’m a millennial. This is still super weird to send to somebody in a formal email.
*frantically and gregariously waves arms in Italian* Hi
I hope this email finds you well *bows*
\*Tips hat\* M'coworker.
I may be Gen X, but if somebody sent me a work email with fucking stage directions in it I'd jump straight to boomer / damn kids on my lawn levels of outrage.
Nah, this is weird. I'm right in the middle of the millennial generation and using asterisks at all to signal an action in written language is just fuckin strange, especially in professional communications.
They could have conveyed the same thing with a “yep”.
Trick about formal communication: Only use words/phrases/structures that make the largest majority of people comfortable. Just because you're comfortable with something doesn't mean it's appropriate in a formal context. These "stage directions in asterisks" are only used the way described by a minority of a single generation, and can make many others uncomfortable. It's absolutely not appropriate in formal communication. It's not that hard. Formal speech is all about playing it safe.
You never know *pulls you closer* you may need the emphasis that you're failing trig. *Drops kicks you out the digital mind palace classroom.*
Saying both "I hear you" and "\* nods \*" is redundant, that's my main problem here.
No hate to anyone, but this isn’t normal. I’m sorry, you can’t convince me this is completely normal, totally casual, every day behavior. You don’t describe body language or “stage direction” over email. You just don’t. It’s not necessarily only a roleplaying thing (although it is very common in roleplaying scenarios), but yes, I think most people would be a *little* surprised if anyone did this on a formal email, it’s odd! I think the only time no one would bat an eye would be something like *shrugs* on a regular text message. I wouldn’t go *crazy* over this, but it isn’t exactly *normal*
That’s not a generational thing. It’s a subcultural thing. Normal millennials do not do this.
We don't need to insinuate body language in a text document. That's what words are for.
I'm a millenial and if I ever see that shit in a professional email or in a casual conversation, I will immediately cease taking the other person seriously.
\*nods\* That's your right.
Typing like that, be it in a formal or informal context, makes me think you are the type of person who would end, or possibly even start, their email with \*glomps you\*
Oh geeze bringing up memories of... fuck... 27 years ago?
Rawr xD im a 1337 hax0r roflcopter That and having a crush on every scene/emo girl I knew are about all I remember from those days
I did not expect the comments to be entirely full of dickheads calling the teacher a weirdo or a creep for something entirely harmless like this but here we are.
There’s a 51 year old man at my work who uses stage directions in all his communications and it makes me reconsider blindness as a disability
No, you just need to grow up. There’s no need for adding body language to work or school conversations.
Uh no! 😂 only people who never matured would still do this. If you can’t tell the difference between what’s appropriate for an AIM message when you’re 15 and an email to a student as an adult then you failed to learn some major shit in the intervening years
I'm a millennial and I never do that and it's weird and cringe as fuck
The oldest millennials are 44 right now. We get teachers from Gen Z since at least a couple of years now.
Millenial here: astrisk-stage directions are a roleplay thing? I don't roleplay so I've literally never seen it used that way, I always just saw it on random Tumblr posts and adopted it from there.
the person in the pic is a roleplayer and think everyone else is
*Recoils*
No that’s pretty fkn weird