The jejemon phenomenon

CEBU, Philippines - Creativity is not rare among Filipinos. Any nation faced with the same life difficulties just has to be creative in finding solutions to problems or relief to day-to-day miseries. People create distractions, in order not to be stomped down in their hurdles.

In fact, many of the "creative distractions" that Filipinos invent get to define the obtaining pop culture, to the point of defying established traditions.  Often, it becomes hard to trace the very issue that a particular distraction was intended to suppress. The distraction just becomes a trend - especially if it's fun and entertaining for those who go by it.

A timely example of the Filipinos' creative capacity to start a trend is the Jejemon, a pop culture phenomenon in the country, involving mostly young people. A person who alters the established language - either English or Pilipino - to the point of incomprehensibility by others who are not in such practice, is a jejemon.  The practice does not only cover language, either spoken or written, but extends to demeanor and fashion as well.

The particular language that the jejemon uses is called Jejenese. It is mainly an internet and texting slang that has become commonplace all over the country, and is constantly evolving. Jejemons are the new hipsters generation. This subculture started in early 2010 and has since had an impact on mainstream Philippine culture.

It is thought that jejemon or jejenese originated in text messages, among people who wanted to draw attention - by being different. These people wanted to be artsy and creative with their texting style. Another probable origin of the practice was to shorten the words, and in the process misspelling the words. As everyone knows, the default SMS character capacity has its limits, especially during those early times before the smartphones; and jejenese was perhaps a way to deal with the limitation.

To complicate matters further, the jejemon writing completely ignores the grammatical rules on capitalization and lower keys. Worse still, letters are mixed with both numbers and punctuation marks to make up words. Interestingly, even with the coming of the better text-capable smartphones, the jejemon texting has remained to be practiced.

Is jejemon the modern hieroglyphics, where shapes and symbols are used to convey ideas, instead of plain words? There are even talks circulating that jejemons could be Egyptians in their past lives? Interesting.

Spoken jejenese, these uttered slang are quite similar to "swardspeak" or "gay" lingo, a slang that has eventually been embraced by the general population. Common examples of swardspeak are the words "jowa," meaning girlfriend or boyfriend, and "shunga," meaning stupid.

Fashion, on the other hand, is another jejemon distinguishing element. For one, jejemons have their own color and style preferences. They are known to sport the emo or gangster look. They also like to strut in big baggy pants, oversized shirts and bandanas, and accessorize themselves with trinkets, "jejecaps" and sunglasses, with seeming disregard whether these come together well.

Jejemons mostly come from the lower economic strata, although some of them come from the higher brackets as well. But while the subculture is already quite widespread - and generally accepted - many people still react negatively to jejemons. They say that jejemons corrupt the language by promoting the wrong usage of words and punctuation.

Social experts are not alarmed, though. They foresee jejemon to die a natural death at the passage of time. In the meantime, those who are for it may continue to practice it. And those who are against it may just continue to grumble.  (FREEMAN)