“The Evolution (and Devolution?) of Human Communication”

Or “Will Men Ever Grow Up?”

How far off am I here?

-- Approximately 100,000 years ago: Human vocal language diversifies, consisting of mostly grunts and yelps.

-- Approx. 40,000 years ago: First cave paintings appear.

-- Approx. 35,000 years ago: First cave paintings with specific animals depicted appear.

-- Approx. 30,000 years ago: Gruk, a hunter/gatherer living in what is modern-day Indonesia, bored with painting pigs and cattle, paints a pic of his weenie. All his friends laugh and laugh and laugh and a movement is born, changing cave art for millennia.

-- Approx. 4,000 B.C.: Writing is developed in Mesopotamia in order to facilitate commerce and trade. Words and language become increasingly more complex.

-- 4,000 B.C. to December 3, 1992, when the first text message was sent: The golden age of words and language. Humans find countless ways to express themselves and their profoundest emotions via language and writing. Words/concepts like "sonder" and the Portuguese "saudades" find their way into the lexicon.

-- December 3, 1992 to present: Human language structure begins to crumble at an alarming rate. Capitalization, punctuation, grammar, and spelling? Ain't nobody got time for that! Texting revolutionizes the way humans communicate and gives everyone more time for the important things in life, the things that really matter. Like,

-- November 2000: Japan releases first camera phone. Men all over the world immediately start photographing their peens.

-- March 21, 2006: Twitter launches, limiting its users to 140 characters for communication, which is just fine with the world because capitalization, punctuation, grammar, and spelling? Ain't nobody got time for that!

-- August 24, 2008: Mindy Callahan, exhausted mother of one child, realizes she doesn't have either the time or the energy to call her best friend on her birthday, so saving precious seconds on her packed schedule, decides to simply write "HBD" on her friend's Facebook wall. Billions of Facebook users, also too busy to be bothered with actually writing out the words "Happy birthday," follow suit, not caring in the least that "HB" would be the proper abbreviation/time-saver-hack.

-- Somewhere around February 2013 to present: An increasingly busy world populace collectively decides that writing words out for a Facebook post, or in the comments section, takes too much time and hassle, so the norm becomes posting stand-alone pictures, memes, and gifs. By some unwritten, but universally accepted and abided-by rule, every meme generated in the known universe must contain a minimum of three capitalization, punctuation, grammar, or spelling errors. Instagram gives Facebook serious competition, as a site where picture communication is preferred over bothering with words.

-- November 2017: With the most modern flight technology at his disposal, a pilot uses his fighter jet's exhaust fumes to draw male genitalia in the sky over unsuspecting citizens in Washington State. (Go Navy!)

-- Sometime in, I don't know, maybe late 2027?: Humans communicate, quite contentedly, and exclusively, with grunts and yelps.

We’re so cooked.

And yes, men are the worst.

(Facebook, JUN 2023)