The IT Student Blog

When you speak to someone (speak in the sense face to face IRL) you use so much more than words. You communicate with your whole body. You might smile, make hand gestures and nod your head in agreement.

It is often said that human communication consists of 93% body language and paralinguistic cues, while only 7% of communication consists of words themselves

–I find that pretty amazing.

However, when having a written conversation, which is basically the way people communicate today, you can never be sure of how that text is perceived, since you aren’t actually there to read any facial expressions. How do we solve this issue?

Well, as my explanatory title suggests: smileys.

If I write to you on msn for instance: “Shut up!” You might feel bad and wonder “Hey?! What have I done to you?”

But if one the other hand I write: “Shut up! ” You will instantly translate this as irony, since the funny smiley sticking out its tongue is anything but serious.

There are innumerable examples of how a smiley can totally change the meaning of expressions. Thus, one should never underestimate the power of the ugly yellow faces!

Foobar. Oh how lovely.

Just learnt that it isn’t true what they say about the acronym for Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition. That’s fubar. Wikipedia taught me the harsh reality.

Even though I kind of want it to be like that, because that’s what I learnt in the elevator one day.

Elevator conversations are always so informative. It’s cold outside today. Really? Yeah. By the way, did you know that foobar actually stands for Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition? What? No? … *silence in lack of better things to say*

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen examples with foo and bar in lack of better words. Where do those words come from?

Until I find the answer to that burning question, I will think that Foobar is a bar where you can order wicked drinks and get fucked up beyond all recognition. Really stupid, but maybe it’s just what foobar is.