Why Me and NOT I?

This "me" business is confusing me.
I like the use of "I" - why not "I" - even a small "i"?
What is the reason for use of "Me" or even "/Me"? Can anyone explain? I don't use it when I text message and I use "myself" more.

Because too many people would think /I was /1...

That or whoever started it, and I don't think it's original to SL, wasn't that up on the language...

this goes at least as far back as IRC.
/me slaps joe with a large trout.

its done so that the result is grammatically correct.
if /I were used the result may look like:
/i slap joe with a large trout
'nina slap joe with a large trout'.

/i am going to sleep
"nina am going to sleep"

/me is going to sleep
"nina is going to sleep"

see?

I never thought of that. Cool!

/me misses that trout from days gone bye

…and for the mundane reason that /i is typically aliased to /invite in IRC =)

So you are referring to yourself in the 3rd person?
As in,
"Oryx, I am scratching my arm"
in the blog would be,
"Oryx, Jig is scratching her arm"
and applying "me" in a different way than 3rd person, to imply,
"The hand that scratches my arm belongs to me"
or,
"The person typing this is me."
Hmmm, interesting.
But referring to oneself as "/me gives slice of pie" is NOT grammatically correct. That was what I was interested in. Thanks.

/me smiles ^^

My alt is a 5 years guy and he always talks using the "me" and "mine": 'Me is want to go to da beach', and 'mine sista is kewlie'.

Jig - in the client for SL "/me" is replaced with the name of the person that writes it. So....

"/me gives slice of pie to X" becomes "Jig gives slice of pie to X"

Thanks - I am not being my typical snarky self here - I am VERY interested in language (it is a basis for how I am employed in real - but not a teacher - just "manipulate" language) so I am simply asking for information. There are some parallels between this and Late Renaissance English.

That's interesting because children don't actually say those things do they? In English, the moment a child chooses to use "me" we correct them. And in all languages, one word we typially learn immediately is the equivalent of "I" and "Hello."

Trout abuse is a serious problem. I'm deeply hurt.

/me slaps everyone with a large halibut...just for the halibut.

Hah! Sorry.

Jig - I think it's not so much a language thing, since in any other media most people would use "me" and "I" correctly and they wouldn't use the "/". It's used to signify an action instead of verbal/written communication. If we were together in RL and hugged, we wouldn't need to communicate verbally - we would just hug each other. There would be no issue of gramatical correctness. Online, we are stuck with typing in our actions, and the "/me" command is the best option we have. As Nina pointed out, "/me" makes the end result as gramatically correct as possible.

I am also an old IRC user. Many a trout has connected upside others' heads by my hand.



Good times indeed.


I still enjoy IRC on occasion, and mostly I consider SL to be IRC with pictures.

/me grins

You're all idiots..complete and total utter idiots..


me...walks away shaking head....

Because forums, (IRC) chats, blogs are basically conversations or monologues, we assume the text written by the poster/chatter to be 'voiced' by the poster/chatter.

If I would say:

"I'm not agreeing with the previous poster. I walk away shaking my head."

readers would consider the latter part being 'voiced' too.
Actually we interpret converstations in forums, blogs, chat etc. exactly as stated above, but without the quotes and the "I say".

This means it requires some signal that we're no longer 'voicing' something, but rather enter a meta level 'outside' of the conversation/monologue. By grammatically using the third person, we basically 'lift' ourself and the reader outside the conversation and take a 3rd person view on the conversation.

As the 3rd person grammar instantly creates this outside view of the conversation. We're now able to act within this outside view. Something not possible with a first person view.

This 'shift in view' can probably confuse people not used to it quite easily, as it's very uncommon in any other (RL) situation.

I also wonder if it is caused by our jobs in real life - I use "I" in almost every circumstance (and in a sense, it asserts myself in the occupation I have chosen). Other people may not do that. Our sense of "self" in terms of modern communication is a fascinating study. By the way, how many of you have noticed country/regionality by the way people type and construct their sentences?