Teen Text Message Champ Wins $25K

Move over Fatal1ty, you’ve just been ousted by Morgan Pozgar, a 13 year old girl from Claysburg, Pennsylvania, as the most nimble fingered geek on the net. If it’s any consolation, you can still claim to be the most marketed, (though that could change if the National Texting Championship takes off as a prime time sport), and I doubt she poses much threat to your Quake 4 reign. Just don’t challenge her to a Battle of the Texts.

Armed with the LG VX9900 enV, it took Morgan just 42 seconds to correctly type ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidoucious! Even though the sound of it is something quite atrocious. If you say it loud enough you’ll always sound precocious’ on the QWERTY keypad to beat out west coast champ, Eli Tirosh, and take home the $25,000 prize. Such a feat was the pinnacle of a grueling training regimen (for the recipients), which according to her own estimation, consisted of 8,000 text messages a month to family and friends.

When Julie Andrews (Mary Poppins) first belted out the lyrics to 'Supercalifragilisticexpialidoucious,' she couldn't have imagined those same words would later be used in what could only be described as 'da gr8st sprtng evnt evr, y0!'

That’s peachy for Morgan, but I’m still coming to terms that such an event exists. Call it a sign of aging (or the Apocalypse), just don’t rule out some cause for concern. Several sites have begun pointing out a 2003 report by Ireland’s State Examination Commission linking text messaging to grammatical laziness. They found that texting ”seems to transfer into formal writing in the form of phonetic spelling and haphazard, or nonexistent, punctuation. There is now a tendency to ignore capital letters and full stops, and to modify the spelling (“hi cu u l8tr”) throughout a text.” Sounds like the typical hyperactive forum post (omg my nu c2d pwns, lol, how do i oc it!!1), but if educators are seeing this kind of AOLish chatter in their students’ term papers, then I’m suddenly scared of what a Generation Z led society could be like (Ali G for President?).

What are your thoughts? Am I being a wet blanket, or do you too find the notion of a National Texting Championship a little absurd? I’d ask my folks, but they’re still trying to fathom why the gamer in me has no issue with the Cyberathletic Professional League…

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