Quit it with all the fucking exclamation points!!!

Why is everyone so excited all the time? Every text and email I get is littered with exclamation points. Even the most mundane, boring texts now end with an exclamation point. Bad news too!

I had just interviewed with a Big Tech Company. The recruiter emailed me to schedule a phone call so she could give me the results. Her email was full of exclamation points. She was obviously pumped to share the good news. Phone call begins and…

I didn’t get an offer. Thanks lady!

I thought people were all bent out of shape due to the million-and-one public greviences shaping our shared, internet cable news reality. Well that’s obviously wrong, because every fucking sentence I see ends with an exclamation point. People are excited and they’ve never been happier!

I text back and forth with my sister. We’re figuring out which restaurant to meet at.

We meet up. Sit down, and my sister barely touches her food because she’s busy bitching about her boss and coworkers. What were all those exclamation points for? They’re supposed to signal positive excitement, not yelling. YELLING IS WHAT ALL CAPS IS FOR!!!

And how did this phenomenon come to be? Did everyone independently decide to use exclamation points all of a sudden, or are people simply parroting eachother? Hmmm, let me think…

My hypothesis is this: People fear that any text or email of their’s without an exclamation point will be interpreted negatively as one of disapproval or indifference.

This means a period is no longer neutral. It is negative.

And the mass overuse of exclamation points just reinforces itself. It’s inadvertant peer pressure. If you use a bunch of exclamation points your life must be blissful, right? And if I don’t use them, then I must not be doing so hot, huh? Well I certainly don’t want anyone to think that. I don’t want anyone to know I haven’t been walking around with an ear-to-ear smile all day. Guess I better include a bunch of exclamation points in the texts I’m about to send my landlord regarding the clogged bathtub!

Overusing exclamation points is insincere. It’s fake. It’s the text equivalent of the same insincerity you see on Instagram.

People who mindlessly adopt exclamation points, also mindlessly adopt other things. They have no brain/blood barrier. Whatever they see or hear instantly invades their minds. It becomes their speech. It becomes their thought.

So next time you receive a text or email from someone and it’s stuffed full of exclamation points, ask yourself “Where else is this person insincere?” Where else have they adopted speech or behaviors just in order to fit in, forteiting that critical, sincere part of themselves in the process?

And if you’re one of the many exclamation point addicts out there, please take a step back and ask yourself “Does every sentence really need an exclamation point?” Is it necessary (or even desireable) to write in the tone of a sugar-crazed five year old, or a sick person experiencing mania?

Do you want to risk becoming the boy who cried wolf when it comes to exclamation points? Will your exclamatory insincerity fry the synapses of every person you communicate with, leaving them incapable of discerning any real, authentic excitement on your part?

I hope not. That would suck!