I hate it and it drives me nuts trying to read it...I am not saying anything bad for the poeple who do use it but I just dont like it

Umm not since I was 15..... although I do say "lol" once in a while!

most of da time so yes but i think i might stop now

I don't hate it, I just am too conceited to let myself go that way.

It has its place: IMS and Text Messaging. It is not appropriate for Picks, comments, articles, emails, etc....

Fanpop does discourage text-talk.

I hate using it myself, but I suppose if other people would rather type that way, it doesn't bother me all too much.

As has been said, it has its place (it still annoys me, but I can let it go), it makes me insane on picks and the such because it looks horrible and a lot of the time is depressingly unreadable. The only thing I really like, nay love, from IM slang is emoticons, which I almost always use just to convey friendliness. I'm not going to do one this time though because I'm a meanie.

I use lol, and that's about it! Even in SMS I spell words out, it's too hard to read otherwise! Agree with Benji though, I love using emoticons, they're nice and friendly I think :)

I think it was only really meant for texting and IM when the person has a reason for wanting to write quickly or in a easy way. It doesn't annoy me that much, I just prefer not to. And I only use smilies if I need to show that I'm joking.

Argh!! I hate it!

Text talk has no place for fanpop, it just makes someone sound unintellegent.

Yeh, when im in a rush or texting or im really exicted. Although i think its allowed, since im a teenager lol ( sorry, i mean laugh out loud or oh i cant be bothered because sometimes its just quicker to use slang)

or O i cant B botherd cose its quik 2 use slang.

Actually scrape that it sounds really chavish : ) but do you in some way or small part of your brain know what i mean????

It's just lazy typing, one of my friends has started using abbreviations while speaking >.< Grrr

Truly, I hate it. It irks me when I see it, but it's all over the internet and theres no avoiding it, it seems.

I try not to though since i'm doing a whole lot of AP next year and i don't want to be in the middle of an essay and be like "thts wuts gunna hppn"

I say lol a lot of times and when I am on a hurry I wrote sth instead of something
I don't find it that bad...

Other than the occasional "lol" I never use IM slang. It drives me insane.

I do however use (and love) expressions like :) because sometimes it's difficult to convey emotions over the internet and you don't want a message misinterpreted.

I'd say LOL would be the only one I use. When people comment and leave things like LMAO and RFOL I have no idea what the hell they are saying. It took me ages to realize what OMG stood for - my daughter enlightened me.

I don't use it, I don't hate it. I always use this kind of writing. Sometimes I say LOL though...

Ok, I have been known to use lol occasionally and smiley faces, but when someone posts a pick which is completely in slang and I have to sit there and decode it, I get really annoyed. Not trying to be snobbish or anything, but if may take you an extra 10 seconds or something to write something out properly, so why rush it?

I think a lot of fanpoppers forget that not all fans are from English-speaking countries, so it must be pretty hard for some of them to understand what people are saying if they are abbreviating everything...

I have to break it to ya. No offense :(
P.S. I hate im slang :P

It's okay when in an IM conversation on AIM or something for a couple words, but when you use it all the time it really gets hard to read! I HATE it!

all I say is lol sometimes.

I hate when people can't write right. Especially 'cause this is an international site, and not a site just for Americans, Englishmen and/or Australian people that talk English daily. Sometimes it can be hard for people that doesn't speak English as a first language to understand it. Myself I don't really have a hard time to understand when people write like that, but I do feel sorry for the people that doesn't understand it.
All the IM words I use from time to time is such words like lol, lmao, omg, imo and stuff like that. it's not like i talk like a robit o_0 xD

thats a really good point Kristine i don't particularly like using it if and for the most part don't because its just easier to write everything out its what i'm used to. so for the most part no but if i'm talking to someone who uses it alot i tend to follow their lead but only for a couple of words like k or lol stuff like that

Only if Im in a rush
<3

When i first started commenting i was using slang but then i saw that people were actually using proper words so i don't do it as much now.

I always use slang for anything i can do it on...
i dnt knw why peeps hate it

u2, yw, thx, ikr, lmabo (don't ask), lol, omg, imo, wtf, wth, btw, and emoticons. Otherwise, I try to be coherent. Usually, I have to ask other people what they mean.

Ok, I guess I use a lot more than I thought I did. *yikes*

I sometimes use "lol" or "lmao".
But things like "u", "y", "bcuz", "h8er" and co. despise me.

THIS.

Using slang gives off an image of immaturity.

No I don't,writing that way never really interested me.

It depends on who I'm talking to but I don't really use it.

I barely even use emoticons, except I use XD a lot. And <3.

Only on chat, but even then I limit it. I really hate 'IKR' and 'TBH'. Grrrr...

I hardly ever use it. It gets so annoying after some time.

I try not to use textspeak or slang here, but I know I use lol at the least. It only irritates me if something contains so much of the stuff that I'm struggling to understand it, though.

Exactly

Ugh no, except for lol, which I sometimes use.

I ocasionally use ''LOL'' and emoticons, But i hate it. I want people to understand me.