Friday, January 8, 2010

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

I love internet memes, to a point. This afternoon, a friend of mine posted the following on Facebook:



"India Foxtrot Yankee Oscar Uniform Charlie Alpha November Uniform November Delta Sierra Tango Alpha November Delta Tango Hotel India Sierra, Charlie Oscar Papa Yankee India Tango Alpha November Delta Papa Alpha Sierra Tango Echo India Tango Tango Oscar Yankee Oscar Uniform Romeo Lima India Victor Echo Juliet Oscar Uniform Romeo November Alpha Lima."

For those not fluent in NATO-standard alphabet code, it says

"If you can understand this, copy and paste it to your LiveJournal."

I had a LiveJournal once, and I still have an account (just so I can comment on other people's blogs), but I wasn't going to post all that (which I typed out by hand, just now), just for the sake of carrying on the internet's latest equivalent to a chain letter. But I decided to play along, so I posted a comment about not using LiveJournal anymore, and instead doing all my writing on Blogger. Which prompted a query regarding the link, only worded as

"Juliet Alpha Yankee Echo: Lima India November Kilo?"

Just out of curiosity, I did a Google search a few minutes (or is that Mikes?) ago for "India Foxtrot Yankee Oscar...", and it seems that this popped up on Twitter eleven days ago. I do not use Twitter. I will not use Twitter. I don't even read other people's Twitter feeds. I don't need to know about ANYTHING that badly. I don't think I've ever been that concerned with what John Scalzi calls "the blatherations of others". That might be a misquote (I think it refers to comments on his blog), but I feel it's appropriate. Now I'm sorry that I've perpetuated this thing.

3 comments:

  1. God I understood all that quickly. Too quickly. I must be Oscar Oscar Mike Foxtrot Mike.

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  2. I didn't realize it came from Twitter when I posted it. I got it from someone else on Livejournal, and I reposted it to Facebook because I was amused by it.

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  3. Hey, I wasn't complaining. I just like to know whence stuff comes.

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