The Rise (and Fall) of the Jejemons

There has been a lot of stir lately regarding the rise of a seemingly new species of linguistically challenged netizens -- the Jejemons. This breed has gained popularity in search engines that Yahoo Philippines even featured it on its news stream. So what are jejemons? Urban Dictionary describes them as follows:

"(Jejemons are) usually seen around social networking sites such as Friendster and Multiply, jejemons are individuals with low IQs who spread around their idiocy on the web by tYpFing LyK diZS jejejeje, making all people viewing their profile raise their eyebrows out of annoyance. Normal people like you and me must take a Bachelor of Arts in Jejetyping in order to understand said individuals, as deciphering their text would cause a lot of frustration and hair pulling."

Wrecking spelling and grammatical havoc online, you would wonder, where, why and how on earth did the Jejemon movement begin? The description offered by Urban Dictionary above provides little answer, but if you have a Friendster account dating back since 2003, you would notice that the Jejemons aren't new.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the Jejemons are a product of a generation born in the height of mobile phones and text messages. Rather than shortening the spelling of long words and using abbreviations, Jejemons have taken redacting to exaggerated levels.

Perhaps it is only now that we have paid closer attention to Jejemons because of the rapid circulation of the photo below.

Presidential candidate Sec. Gilbert Teodoro holding out a sign which translates to "I will send the Jejemons back to elementary school."

I have only copied this picture from a friend's Facebook wall which was posted yesterday and already, it has generated 40 or so comments of hilarity, hatred and dismay for our failure to wield the English language.

Honestly, I first thought that the Jejemons are just funny like some satirical fad out to tickle your brain cells. But after a while, people have been jumping in the Jejemon bandwagon and started posting more and more Jejemon literature on the web. It just became really annoying and I want it to stop.

Come to think of it, I really don't understand why anyone in the world would want to type like that and showcase just how inept he is of English syntax. As Filipinos, we have long prided ourselves with having excellent English instruction (I will leave the discussion on colonization to another day) and it's embarrassing that such idiocy would originate from us.

Unless you remove the annoying Jejemon from your friend list, you really cannot control what goes up your Facebook news feed. And even if you have succeeded in the heartless process of blocking the person, one or two Jejemons will still somehow irritate your eyes by leaving a harmless comment on one of your friend's status messages.

The fact is, a Jejemon could be anyone. He could be your friendly school mate back in high school. He could be your neighbor, your cousin, your crush. Heck, he could be you for all I care. While it is true that democracy allows us to express ourselves in the web in whatever way we want, regardless of how foolishly spelled out our thoughts are, I personally don't want the Jejemons to proliferate their literature and cause eye sores everywhere.

So whether they stick around or die off, I only have one request. Jejemons, please spare me my sanity.