[tptacek]

This is very funny, but it's also disquieting, because people who text like this absolutely do exist; I know because I'm on the list for the block I live on. Modulo a lack of spelling and grammar errors, this is what normal people sound like. The idea that very normal people behavior is this odd or telling is, itself, pretty telling!

[zamfi]

I’m also on the list of the block I live on, and people also text like this on that list…

…including, me. On that list.

I think part of what’s disquieting is that there is a “formal text English” that exists (and people know about), but people use it only in certain circumstances, like when you’re texting a group of people that you don’t know very well, and that you don’t want to offend, or that you want to seem “proper” for.

It’s temping to think that what we observe on these lists is how those people are, but every now and then someone on my list will post a message intended for someone else…and it no longer fits “formal text English”.

I suspect this language’s use is highly contextual. To me, part of the the oddness of it all is that I would almost never use formal text English in the contexts shown in these marketing images.

[distract8901]

Huh, maybe I'm weird, but I use the same 'voice' in all forms of communication. With the exception of the shorthand I share with my husband, I always text in full, properly formatted sentences and paragraphs. I use the same style for texts, mastodon posts, and long hackernews comments. It's also the same style I typically speak in normal conversation.

Now I think about it, that's probably an autistic trait. I kind of have to carefully construct what I'm saying in any context, and it looks like this.

[mikewarot]

I am also very careful to not let the shortcomings of the keyboard alter, in any way, the text I'm composing. Finding [ and ] on a phone are a pain in the rear, but if I'm composing something with links here on HN... it's going to look as much as possible like everything else I post.

For me, technology bends to my will, not the other way around.

[bombcar]

My iMessage texting from my computer is quite conversational and detailed, taking particular delight in proper punctuation and spelling.

My texts from my iPhone look like they were created by an AI trained on deranged monkeys attempting to recreate Shakespeare.

[another2another]

me 2too!!!

posted from my iPhone

[nenaoki]

My hackernews comment drafting process often goes right up to the end of the delay setting I have. Closer to one and done, a la speech, is a habit I'd love to pick up.

[rz2k]

In addition to your block's list, from the article:

> Does the Dimension Apple exist?

> For a long time I have enjoyed the stilted, improbable cheeriness of fake Apple texts for their extreme distance from my own texting habits and experiences. (As my friend Emma put it to our group chat “if any of you texted me like this I would immediately call your significant others to make sure you hadn’t been kidnapped.”) But in the last year or so I have realized that Dimension Apple does exist--or at least overlaps with our own--in one very specific place: The WhatsApp groups that the parents at my son’s daycare/school create to share information or set up play dates. In these groups, and only in these groups, do I encounter the same kind of earnest helpfulness and baffling ebullience that exists in the Dimension Apple. Naturally, I find them totally alienating.

[rexpop]

I don't understand this person's expectations: are their text groups gruff, pugnacious, sluggish, and terse?? What is even the point, then?

[sctb]

I text almost exactly like this. Probably both Dimension Apple writers and myself are pretending to be normal in the same way...

[krsdcbl]

What's making the "apple dimension texts" kinda creepy is not directly the language or lack of typos.

It's the overly formalized way everyone seems to interact regarding anything, the formulation of every little remark showing signs of a communication environment where the participants take care to conform to certain social norms and expectations, like normal people _would_ in spaces with such unspoken constraints (like the list of their block for example) -- but they seem to do that with close friends and family!

[user3939382]

Never in my life heard someone use the word “modulo” like this. An older or more formal style would use the word “save” here, or more commonly “except for”

[Traubenfuchs]

I text back and forth like this at the beginning of dating sometimes. Though if that happens, things usually don‘t work out because it means we just don‘t vibe naturally.