A mounting trend in popular culture has started to leak into the advertising industry. Mindless abbreviations, misspellings and a generally lazy attitude toward simple grammar have taken over America — through not only our rapid interaction via e-mail, instant messaging and cellular “texting” but also the way corporations speak to the population of today.

A variety of sources are to blame for the recent popularity of new online dialects, but those abusing the trend as a youth-targeting device are encouraging the belief that sub-20s culture has little to offer and is insulting the young people of today.

A recent flood of advertisements on the college-newspaper scene, induced by a new Doritos marketing push, frames the problem at hand.

DNT procrastin8. DNT hesit8. DNT w8 2b gr8. Such are the “slogans” presented in a simple serif font within blank, framed advertisements plastered throughout print media outlets everywhere. Slang has always existed and advertisers have always used “young” lingo in mass-market campaigns; only now has the trend turned from what’s trendy to what’s just plain stupid.

The perception of the average-age student by the rest of the country has been reduced to a set of stupid acronyms and pointless sound substitutions, and the “inNw?” campaign Doritos’ marketing genius has devised allows rare insight into exactly what marketing agencies “r” thinking. Advertisers today seek a common target: the vast, apparently simple-minded and, most importantly, money-blowing youth spread across the country like grease on an overused keyboard.

An easy place to lay the blame for the transition is squarely on the shoulders of youths themselves. What makes advertisers think students at a school as prestigious as the University of Wisconsin would be interested in half-phrases containing mostly consonants and numbers? Simply put, the fact that it’s true — at least partially.

Many seem comfortable with the opinion mass-targeting publicity houses have of them, and perhaps their reasoning lies in the way they actually converse. The idea that young people talk using oversimplified dialect is nothing more than a straightforward observation. Any advertising mogul need not look past their son’s bedroom or the family den: the advertising campaigns practically write themselves upon reading just a few lines of an instant-message conversation.

What r u doin?? I am writing about two-thirds of the letters necessary in written conversation, actually. And in doing so, I am creating an image of myself that is not only inaccurate but also demeaning. Moreover, I am distancing myself from any aptitude at written conversation and actively pursuing an even more inconsequential role in society. B back l8r, I have to go lead my unprofessional and consequence-free lifestyle.

There’s no need for interaction to be overly formal, but some semblance of actual English should be present in text-based dialogue. It’s simple, really: ppl is just “people” missing a few vowels, ur is usually “you’re” but sometimes “your,” “r” is “are” and “i” is “I.” The translation for “i” requires only one simple stroke of the Shift key on a standard-issue keyboard and the others can be achieved through the use of other nearby keys.

Unfortunately, the matter of mind-numbing advertising isn’t as easily rectifiable as that of lazy online communication; the level of advertising dumbification taking place is not justifiable simply by acknowledging the part many young people play in the proliferation of their newfound image.

Advertising companies and the public in general are also to blame for allowing such mind-numbing ideas about young tastes to go unchecked: they should be courteous enough to assume young people as well as old can understand more advanced text-based communication.

The firms engineering brilliant campaigns such as “inNw?” are not only assuming the blanketing, pigeonholing perception of today’s young culture is acceptable, but also that today’s young culture is downright dumb enough to accept firms’ categorizations without hesit8tion.

Firms’ attempts to keep up with the tastes of the modern youth have evolved into plain-and-simple stupid advertising. The young people of today should actively discourage the mindless opinion many have of them, and major advertisers should look toward a more respectful, equal-platform means of reaching out to students everywhere. Only through frequent intellectual dialogue among peers and respect for young people worthy of self-aware individuals among advertisers can the plague infesting advertising and the rest of popular culture be contained.