Facebook Lexicon

I've noticed that the classic Facebook status update is creating a grammatical legacy. Originally, the status bar only allowed you to add information about yourself after the fixed construction "Your Name is:". (Information such as how you were enjoying a delicious hoagie or that you were rejoicing that the Heels just scored or that you were, at midnight, ready for a lie-down.) Forgetting the need of your social network to know your every move, many people simply treat the "is" more as a jumping off point than as a present tense verb with any implications for the words that follow.

For example, just yesterday mi amigo Zain posted that she "is tra-la-la." Another friend says she "is you wouldn't like me when I'm angry." It has become somewhat hip to simply ignore Facebook's forced sentence construction and go for it. In fact, Facebook--never far behind its facebookers--now even lets you delete the once-obligatory "is" (although it still discreetly suggests it, like a butler hoping that the young gentleman is not going out in public wearing just his undershirt as a top).

It seems to me to be its own example of language evolution, analogous to a form of functional shifting; some moral equivalent of turning Google into a verb, such as "I googled that hottie."

In any case, when I obsessively check on the statuses of my own friendses I am reminded of the awesomely woeful '80s fashion of storytelling. Remember how everyone used to say, "She was like, 'no way,' and I was like 'yes way' and then she was like 'nuh uh!' and I was all like, 'YUH huh!' and then Bruce was like, 'Dude, its true.'" Those were, like, the days.

PS - In fact, I think the Facebook status update should force you to relive the '80s. "iClipse is like: this coke is tasty." Oh, and "I Gotta Move" by Ben Kweller is catchy like the herps; now playing on iTunes.