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Trying A Little Too Hard To Be Hip (update)

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
November 2, 2009
Filed under

Keith’s 30 Oct note: I am certainly all for trying to connect to a broader audience but this NASA 360 post by Johnny Alonso (the MTVish on-air host) is just silly with its attempt at teen Twitter and SMS lingo i.e. “hai guyz” and “that would totally suck. lol”, “it was hawt :)” and “These cats Mike and Barry”. You have to read it twice to make certain you understand the needlessly jargonized lingo. There’s no reason not to use simply written language on a website where you are not constrained to 140 characters like Twitter. Like I said, its fine to be cool, but this is just annoying. According to the IMDB website, Johnny is 39. I am not sure I know too many 39 year olds who actually talk (or write) like this. But I am 54 – so what do I know.
Amazing How People Love To Slam Others…Or Should I Say Just Me? 🙂, Johnny Alonso, NASA.gov
“Wow….I guess having a “colorful personality”on my posts gets some of the “anonymous” really wound up, which gives them reason to slam me 🙂 Hai….some news for you – you don’t have to read what I type :)”
Keith’s note: Well, Johnny, then perhaps you should be posting these things on a personal blog – not an official website hosted by an agency of the Federal government – one paid for by taxpayers. And if you do decide to post on an official website, you should follow the practices adhered to by everyone else who does.
Keith’s update: Johnny’s response has been deleted. Here is what it looked like.

NASA, Ur Doin’ It Wrong, AstroEngine
“Running the risk of sounding a little long in the tooth, Keith is obviously a little riled about the standard of writing on this particular post. At first, I was mildly amused, but the more I looked at it, the more I realized NASA’s outreach style might be flawed. Using text-speak to convey his work presenting for NASA makes Alonso sound limited (which I’m sure he’s not, although I haven’t seen him in action, so I might be wrong), but worst of all it knocks the credibility of NASA outreach.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.