Okay, so I am a perfectionist of sorts who really strives to use the correct phrases and words whenever possible. With that said, my body cringes when others consistently show a lack of basic language, grammar, and communication fundamentals. Now, jump into this technology-filled world and look around. People are on Twitter and Facebook using forms of shorthand like acronyms and slang (etc) to convey their message to their friends and colleagues. We have all seen the LOLs and BRBs out there, and some have used “B4” and “ur” in order to better stick within the message length restrictions on Twitter. I understand and appreciate that creativity, but we all need to take a moment to think about what our words and phrases are truly saying before we hit the send button. Case in point… IRL!
IRL (in real life) has become synonymous with everything offline. On Twitter, for example, you see people tweeting about how they are anxious to meet up with someone IRL for the first time. What they are really trying to say is that they have never met the specific Twitter friend in person but look forward to meeting (possibly at an upcoming industry conference). This really gets under my skin because I meet “REAL” people everyday online and via social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, foursquare, and Empire Avenue. I’m not playing some fictional game called social media or something; instead, I am engaging my audience, reaching out to new and great people and brands, and listening. I’m not alone in this line of thinking; Alexandra Samuel, the director of the Social + Interactive Media Centre at Emily Carr University, blogger for Harvard Business Review and Oprah.com, and the principal of Social Signal, reminded us to stop apologizing for our online lives. In that blog post Alex reminded us of the following:
There’s no denying the differences between life online and off. In our online lives we shake off the limitations of our physical selves, perhaps even our names and consciences, too. What remains are the fundamentals: human beings, human conversations, human communities. To say that “reality” includes only offline beings, offline conversations and offline communities is to say that face-to-face matters more than human-to-human.
With that said, I ask each of you to do me a favor. If you are online and tweeting or Facebook posting, think about what you are saying and the words you are selecting before you hit the send button. Unless you are specifically talking about the Indy Racing League, the acronym, IRL, has very little use in our online conversations, especially if we are trying to differentiate between our online and offline interactions. Instead of using IRL, think about using P2P (person-to-person), F2F (face-to-face), or IP (in person) – something… anything other than IRL! Am I wrong in my assessment or point of view?
