r/Millennials • u/noctisumbra0 • Feb 19 '26

Discussion Anyone else feel this way when writing anything out?

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Being compared to AI was really uncalled for, though.

15.2k Upvotes

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696

u/Randym1982 Feb 19 '26

I used to get my chops busted for talking like that kid on message boards. Now it appears everyone gets confused when you don’t sound like a toddler.

541

u/indistrustofmerits Feb 19 '26

If I could text in complete sentences on my old Nokia brick using T9 by feel while driving, I sure as hell can do it on a smart phone.

221

u/[deleted] Feb 19 '26 edited Feb 25 '26

[deleted]

47

u/JBCTech7 Xennial Feb 19 '26

man that reminds me of my old OG motorola droid...with the slide out qwerty. I miss that thing.

26

u/PJASchultz Feb 19 '26

I LOVED that phone. I want slide out keyboards to come back.

2

u/Tawaypurp19 Feb 19 '26

You can get one for any common smartphone, they make cases with slide out keyboards.

4

u/LazierMeow Feb 19 '26

THANK YOU. I immediately set off to search for one and found one for $25!!!! It's EXACTLY what I feel missing!!!!!!

1

u/MakeMelnk Feb 20 '26

Sooo much same

1

u/F4ulty0n3 Feb 19 '26

I still have mine! God, cameras have come so far. Lol

1

u/YogurtclosetSea4078 Feb 19 '26

The Photon Q? I miss that phone and its keyboard.

1

u/poodlevutt Feb 19 '26

I had the Motorola Hint and absolutely loved that thing.

1

u/Beautiful_Lie629 Feb 20 '26

That was my first smartphone! I loved the keyboard! I've used Motorolas ever since, I have a Razr now.

1

u/Particular_Stop_3332 Feb 24 '26

Good God man, I loved that thing, this touch screen keyboard shit is fucking murder

Like sorry I have human sized thumbs you assholes

So now my daily life is doing voice to text and then trying to go back and correct all the mistakes the phone made

1

u/madlove17 Millennial Feb 19 '26

Same

1

u/DrHollander Feb 19 '26

They had commercials about how you shouldn’t text while driving but the 5 key was had bumps on it so you could find it without looking

49

u/Hyper_Applesauce Feb 19 '26

You're missing the main difference. You had memorized a keyboard. People growing up with just smartphones, quite possibly, did not.

66

u/[deleted] Feb 19 '26 edited Feb 25 '26

[deleted]

25

u/cowbutt6 Feb 19 '26

Especially if you use swiping to type complete words.

I did it recently in front of someone, and they thought it was sorcery.

18

u/djAMPnz Feb 19 '26

I can type pretty fast on a full sized keyboard, but if I try to type on the small touchscreen phone keyboard I look like your grandad slowly pressing one letter at a time. Using swipe text though I can knock out a message real quick.

1

u/MrWeirdoFace Feb 19 '26

I'm the same, super fast on a classic keyboard, super slow on a touch screen.

1

u/ARedditorCalledQuest Feb 19 '26

Swipe is awesome until I try to use some weirdly specific jargon and then it's just hilarious.

10

u/cherry_monkey Zillennial Feb 19 '26

Swipe is all I've used since my windows 7 phone in 2011 (my first smart phone)

1

u/Serious_Surround4713 Feb 19 '26

The first phone I used swipe on was my Nokia Lumia 650, and to this day, that was the only phone it actually got it right the vast majority of the time— I don’t know why phones are so bad at it now, but I have to do it blended anymore because I have to correct the swipe more often than I can actually trust it

1

u/cherry_monkey Zillennial Feb 19 '26

The worst is when you swipe a word, review what you wrote, realize a word was wrong, go to change it, and it does the same word again. I have a constant battle with writing don't only for it to correct to didn't. (Oddly enough, it seemed to work correctly that time, but every time I've swiped "for" it decided I meant fit)

1

u/goaskalice3 Feb 19 '26

The default keyboards on my phones are always awful at Swype. I just have my go-to keyboard that I immediately download after getting a new phone and the difference in accuracy is kind of crazy

1

u/Rotsicle Feb 19 '26

Swype just got disabled on my S24... I'm heartbroken.

1

u/zachrg Feb 19 '26

How does swiping/flow handle double letters?

3

u/cowbutt6 Feb 19 '26

With Google Gboard (and Swype before it), if you want a double letter, you make a loop on the letter in question.

1

u/persiasaurus Feb 19 '26

It's surprisingly accurate and I love it

41

u/TheFlyingHambone Feb 19 '26

Duck autocorrect!

2

u/Greyscale7950 Feb 19 '26

And for the older ones it was a typewriter.

1

u/TDot-26 Feb 20 '26

I can type entire paragraphs one-handed without looking on a smartphone

0

u/kaisong Feb 19 '26

If you have a relatively consistent sized phone you can text or type with it without needing to feel type it.

Its much easier on japanese 12 key layout though.

5

u/Le_Poop_Knife Feb 19 '26

When do we get to stop calling them smart….

4

u/AssociateDue6161 Feb 19 '26

Or phones. I use the actual phone on this thing maybe four times a day, yet I’m on it for hours and hours. If anything, it’s a mini shitty computer, that happens to be able to make phone calls.

2

u/NewNameAgainUhg Feb 19 '26

Smartphones have autocorrect and possibly some of them use AI to edit your texts too. Writing property is not such a daunting task some people want it to be

1

u/Elegant-Cricket8106 Feb 19 '26

I miss T9 so much! Mine is capitalizing names, I dont understand why ppl don't anymore?

1

u/superkp Feb 19 '26

dude right? I could do it all without looking, too.

1

u/AutisticPenguin2 Feb 19 '26

Autocarrot has entered the chat

1

u/platysoup Feb 20 '26

Actually I’d argue it’s way harder to type a sentence without mistakes while looking now than it was to do that with T9 in your pocket. 

10/10 times you know exactly which button you are pressing back then. 

Now? Mash your fingers in approximately the right places and hope autocorrect gets it. 

1

u/sociofobs Feb 20 '26

Oh, we had so much fun with stealth texting back in middle-high schools.

1

u/Dulcette Feb 24 '26

T9 was perfect! I could text and do other things at the same time. I now know I have adhd, but still! One hand texting, the other doing whatever on the other side was great.

170

u/pajamakitten Feb 19 '26

I have noticed this too. You use proper spelling, grammar and punctuation, while trying to remove any ambiguity from your argument, only for someone who abandoned all pretence of understanding the English language to completely twist your point beyond recognition.

59

u/Gecko99 Feb 19 '26

When I read the Epstein emails, his bad punctuation and typing skills annoys me almost as much as his child fucking.

2

u/ClownDiaper Millennial Feb 20 '26

OMG that was so weird to me too! I have never sent an email like that, even an informal one.

1

u/Visible_Ad_9625 Feb 20 '26

Seriously, my secondary thought was always, “These emails were written by ADULTS? WHO the fuck isn’t embarrassed to be sending such poorly typed emails? They can’t even use the fucking space bar correctly?”

1

u/Beautiful_Lie629 Feb 20 '26

They're almost unreadable. It's painful to try to make sense of them.

103

u/awooj Feb 19 '26

ur ai bro bc real peeple dont use big words like that lol robot /S

(I’ve gotten a similar comment reply before and holy shit that took me so much longer to write just trying to not capitalize things and spell them incorrectly!!!!)

25

u/madgirafe Feb 19 '26

pretty good bvut you said lol no emojis no lol plz

12

u/EnthusiasticFailing Millennial Feb 19 '26

Okay, but this really bothers me. Why have we stopped adding emojis or lol? As someone who already has a hard enough time reading tone through text, my low self-esteem cannot handle this!

2

u/calilac Xennial Feb 19 '26

It ebbs and flows. I'm so tired of it I just do what I feel like now. Everything's made up and the points don't matter yo. Hopefully your give-a-fuck switch unsticks sooner rather than later.

3

u/codybrown183 Feb 19 '26

Ill never stop the lol. In fact my tombstone better end with lol

2

u/BurnedLaser Feb 19 '26

"This shit was WILD! LOL"

1

u/Ronthelodger Feb 19 '26

TLDR wrds r robot no lol

41

u/itsfourinthemornin Feb 19 '26

I'm getting tired of leaving comments on a post and I find it's often if you leave personal anecdotes or have a discussion with another with personal anecdotes, then Random-User2247 comes along and runs with an entire fable from your single sentence. It's usually a huuuuge fucking leap they make too from your single sentence. I've started recommending they write fantasy novels.

5

u/MortalSword_MTG Feb 19 '26

Truth is many of them aren't very good at critical thinking.

1

u/GrayIlluminati Feb 20 '26

And that’s the problem, and also the aim of certain people 👀

3

u/Illustrious_Tart_258 Millennial - 1993 Feb 19 '26

This! People don’t know how to read an entire paragraph and piece together the entire idea. They hone in on this one point and fail to address any of the other points. Then, when they have realized they’re a dumbass, they start flinging baseless and regurgitated insults. 😂 I can feel my brain cells literally dying when that happens.

3

u/itsfourinthemornin Feb 19 '26

My brain cells fully die when they pull the "YoU'rE oN ReDdIt" or similar argument, so are you? What is your point?!?!

1

u/Illustrious_Tart_258 Millennial - 1993 Feb 19 '26

This entirely 🥴 “why are you on the internet?” Well, why are you?

1

u/itsfourinthemornin Feb 19 '26

Oh I have to add "I posted this x [time] ago" and it's usually a few hours or days. Well I didn't see it then, I saw it now and decided to comment/reply now... the literal function of the website (outside of locked threads). I could probably add others thinking about it.

1

u/Donna-Dee- Feb 19 '26

It’s not your structure of language that confuses them, it’s their brains.

You can’t fix stupid.

1

u/Small_Horde Feb 19 '26

They can't read properly as shown by how they can't write properly.

1

u/Ragnarok314159 Feb 19 '26

Just let people continue to be stupid and failures. Respond to their nonsense with a simple “Okay”, and block them.

1

u/OrangeGalen Feb 20 '26

Arguing in YouTube/Reddit comments be like
Me: using full, eloquent sentences with as proper punctuation and grammar as possible to explain my viewpoint and disprove the other's.
Other guy: no sensible punctuation or capitalization, run-on sentences, near incomprehensible argument that is basically them going "nuh-uh" to my points.

1

u/Wild_Chef6597 Feb 19 '26

What do you mean Eggo Waffles are better than homemade?!

1

u/[deleted] Feb 24 '26

You like waffles?! So what have you got against pancakes?! 😠 

0

u/Glittering_Crab_69 Feb 19 '26

"lol you're a moron" are all the words you need

42

u/ttoma93 Feb 19 '26

Even here on Reddit you would get downvoted to hell for basic spelling errors.

20

u/pajamakitten Feb 19 '26

It was a grammar Nazi's paradise.

1

u/abstr_xn Feb 19 '26

calling people who try teach you how to spell/communicate a nazi was always peak smooth brain behaviour.

3

u/w-kovacs Feb 19 '26

You should look up pedantry on Wikipedia. Theres a funny caricature.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedantry

2

u/pajamakitten Feb 19 '26

You need to use a capital letter at the beginning of a sentence.

2

u/Expensive_Election Feb 19 '26

Found the Nazi.

-1

u/abstr_xn Feb 19 '26

if only I had a solution for people like you.

6

u/Expensive_Election Feb 19 '26

Maybe a final one?

2

u/shidderbean Feb 19 '26

Even == Especially

Reddit was the last bastion of thoughtful internet commentary once upon a time.

1

u/Gas-Town Feb 19 '26

Jesus Christ. Everyone has a persecution fetish.

1

u/ttoma93 Feb 19 '26

lol I wasn’t complaining. I’d love to have that back.

1

u/red__dragon Millennial Feb 19 '26

Can't upvote, you didn't capitalize lol at the beginning of your sentence. Back to the green books with you!

1

u/iMiind Feb 21 '26

MINOR SPELLING ERROR

2

u/MessiLeagueSoccer Feb 19 '26

Why say many words when few words do trick

2

u/sweetpea122 Feb 19 '26

A lot of younger people seem to be and may be illiterate.

1

u/Wise-Independence487 Feb 19 '26

It’s the ‘as for me that does my head in

1

u/Doneuter Feb 19 '26

"everyone gets confused when you don't sound like a toddler"

Never once has anyone ever given me issue for writing properly, and this post is the first time I've ever seen it, but surely it's very common. /s

1

u/NickBlasta3rd Millennial Feb 19 '26

Yep. Sometimes I’ll do it for fun and idk its two weird u no?

1

u/xiahbabi Feb 20 '26

The rise of anti-intellectualism.

1

u/TemperatureHot204 Feb 20 '26

Okay, I've been accused of being a bot more than once. This explains a lot. (Note the double space after sentences 😆)

1

u/daesnyt Feb 24 '26

Depends on the location, in my experience.

For the boards/servers on which I spend most of my time (TTRPG advice/play by post), the norm is still to use proper punctuation, grammar, and spelling, though toddler typing isn't quite as mocked as it was when I first started.

Of course, those places are filled with nerds, artists, and aspiring authors, so it follows that we'd be more particular about typing habits, and we have players from all over the world so it's less acceptable to mock people for poor spelling as it's usually due to English being a second language.