Keysmash

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Keysmash
Keysmash examples.png
Examples of keysmashes
MeaningUsed to convey laughter or other intense emotions

A keysmash (alternatively key smash or keyboard smash) is internet slang for the typing out of a random sequence of letters on a computer keyboard or touchscreen, often to express intense emotion. [1] Gaining popularity since 2019, the term is often used to convey intense or indescribable emotions (such as frustration or excitement), [2] and it can also be used as an expression of laughter.

Contents

History and usage

Dictionary.com lists keysmash as both a noun ("I typed a keysmash") and a verb ("I keysmashed a response"), dating the term to sometime between 1995 and 2000. [1]

The first commonly used variation of "keysmashing" appeared and possibly first majorly originated from the Turkish internet sphere, where the so-called "random laugh", or "random" (as said in Turkish) has been in use since at least the mid-2000s in online forums, e.g ekşisözlük, to convey and portray a more genuine laughter—implying a user "laughed so hard that they fell on (rolled over) their keyboard". [3] [4]

The term is often associated with Stan Twitter users, VSCO culture, and members of the LGBT community, but is not restricted to these groups. Keysmashing has occasionally been referred to as "gay keysmashing" due to this association. [5]

Variations

Keysmashes of any kind can usually be seen in either all lower case, or all upper case letters. [2] Despite how random many keysmashes may appear to be, there are societal patterns and norms to what a keysmash is supposed to look like. [6] [5] Keysmashes that fail to visually appeal to the ones typing them have a chance of being completely rewritten or having a few minor adjustments made (i.e. removing or adding new characters). [2] The overall format of a keysmash is one that is usually dependent on the type of device or keyboard that is being used [6] and therefore makes different keyboard layouts more acceptable for keysmashing than others.

QWERTY

Layout of a QWERTY keyboard KB United States.svg
Layout of a QWERTY keyboard

Keysmashes typed on QWERTY keyboards are not as randomized as the action of keysmashing tends to imply. QWERTY keysmashes consistently begin with the letter "a", which are often followed by the letters "sdf" which can combine to form a strand of letters commonly associated with keysmashing. [2] The letters "asdf" appear as their own slang term in several online dictionaries such as dictionary.com. [7] The typical keysmash tends to be much longer than "asdf"; because of this, it rarely appears as a keysmash on its own. QWERTY keysmashes tend to be made up of letters and characters from what is referred to as the keyboard's home row, which includes the letters a, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, s as well as two special characters, the semicolon (;) and apostrophe ('). [8] When keysmashing, these letters do not usually appear in this exact order and are more often seen alternating and repeating to form a randomized pattern. Keysmashes can include letters and characters from both the top and bottom row as the keyboard as well, though more commonly from the top row (qwe...) than the bottom (zxc...), but rarely include numbers. [2]

Smartphone keyboards

While a majority of smartphone virtual keyboards continue to use a type of QWERTY layout, the positioning of a user's fingers over a phone screen vary from that of a physical keyboard. Because of this, the increase in smartphone technology has led to new combinations of keysmashes that look different from their physical QWERTY predecessors. [2] Examples of these new patterns can include "gbgdgdhfbhfchd", "akskskdkfjansnf" or "hdhfhdjs", all of which are the effects of users' fingers hovering over the center of smartphone keyboards rather than QWERTY's home row. [6] Keysmashes made using this method rarely include numbers or special characters.

Dvorak

Layout of a Dvorak keyboard Dvorak keyboard layout diagram.png
Layout of a Dvorak keyboard

The home row of Dvorak keyboards varies greatly from that of QWERTY keyboards, beginning with the vowels "aoeu" instead of "asdf". Gretchen McCulloch reports having talked with several Dvorak keyboard users who gave up keysmashing because the layout of their keyboards produced patterns that were "socially illegible". [2]

Other languages

Other languages may have special characters, different symbols, and such more. Popular instances of these characters can be found in the Turkish and German languages, specifically with special letters such as ß, Ö, Ş, Ç, Ğ, Ü, İ and ı.

VSCO culture

In VSCO culture, there is a variant of the standard keysmash that uses a repetitive pattern of "ksksksk" that replaces the stereotypical smashing of random keys from which keysmashing earned its name. Generally, the usage of "ksksks" is similar to that of the usual QWERTY keysmash in that it is often used to express a form of laughter or other unidentifiable emotion. [9]

In 2019, the usage of "ksksks" became most commonly associated with what the internet refers to as VSCO girls, but there is evidence on Twitter which dates its usage back to 2009 among Portuguese speakers located in Brazil. [9] From 2010 on, it could be found used by a growing variety of people on social media, including people from the Black, gay, and UK communities. [9]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">QWERTY</span> Keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets

QWERTY is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets. The name comes from the order of the first six keys on the top letter row of the keyboard. The QWERTY design is based on a layout included in the Sholes and Glidden typewriter sold via E. Remington and Sons from 1874. QWERTY became popular with the success of the Remington No. 2 of 1878, and remains in ubiquitous use.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">LOL</span> Internet slang

LOL, or lol, is an initialism for laughing out loud or laugh out loud and a popular element of Internet slang. It was first used almost exclusively on Usenet, but has since become widespread in other forms of computer-mediated communication and even face-to-face communication. It is one of many initialisms for expressing bodily reactions, in particular laughter, as text, including initialisms for more emphatic expressions of laughter such as LMAO and ROFL or ROTFL.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">QWERTZ</span> Keyboard layout

The QWERTZ or QWERTZU keyboard is a typewriter and keyboard layout widely used in Central Europe. The name comes from the first six letters at the top left of the keyboard:.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AZERTY</span> Keyboard layout used for French

AZERTY is a specific layout for the characters of the Latin alphabet on typewriter keys and computer keyboards. The layout takes its name from the first six letters to appear on the first row of alphabetical keys; that is,. Similar to the QWERTZ layout, it is modelled on the English QWERTY layout. It is used in France and Belgium, although each of these countries has its own national variation on the layout. Luxembourg and Switzerland use the Swiss QWERTZ keyboard. Most residents of Quebec, the mainly French-speaking province of Canada, use a QWERTY keyboard that has been adapted to the French language such as the Multilingual Standard keyboard CAN/CSA Z243.200-92 which is stipulated by the government of Quebec and the Government of Canada.

Touch typing is a style of typing. Although the phrase refers to typing without using the sense of sight to find the keys—specifically, a touch typist will know their location on the keyboard through muscle memory—the term is often used to refer to a specific form of touch typing that involves placing the eight fingers in a horizontal row along the middle of the keyboard and having them reach for specific other keys. Both two-handed touch typing and one-handed touch typing are possible.

The numero sign or numero symbol, , (also represented as , No̱, No. or no.), is a typographic abbreviation of the word number(s) indicating ordinal numeration, especially in names and titles. For example, using the numero sign, the written long-form of the address "Number 22 Acacia Avenue" is shortened to "№ 22 Acacia Ave", yet both forms are spoken long.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Typing</span> Text input method

Typing is the process of writing or inputting text by pressing keys on a typewriter, computer keyboard, mobile phone, or calculator. It can be distinguished from other means of text input, such as handwriting and speech recognition. Text can be in the form of letters, numbers and other symbols. The world's first typist was Lillian Sholes from Wisconsin in the United States, the daughter of Christopher Sholes, who invented the first practical typewriter.

Predictive text is an input technology used where one key or button represents many letters, such as on the physical numeric keypads of mobile phones and in accessibility technologies. Each key press results in a prediction rather than repeatedly sequencing through the same group of "letters" it represents, in the same, invariable order. Predictive text could allow for an entire word to be input by single keypress. Predictive text makes efficient use of fewer device keys to input writing into a text message, an e-mail, an address book, a calendar, and the like.

There are two major English language computer keyboard layouts, the United States layout and the United Kingdom layout defined in BS 4822. Both are QWERTY layouts. Users in the United States do not frequently need to make use of the £ (pound) and € (euro) currency symbols, which are common needs in the United Kingdom and Ireland, although the $ symbol is also provided as standard on UK and Irish keyboards. In other countries which predominantly use English as a common working language, such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, the US keyboard is commonly used.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Japanese input method</span> Methods used to input Japanese characters on a computer

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Filler text</span> Text generated to fill space or provide unremarkable and/or standardised text

Filler text is text that shares some characteristics of a real written text, but is random or otherwise generated. It may be used to display a sample of fonts, generate text for testing, or to spoof an e-mail spam filter. The process of using filler text is sometimes called greeking, although the text itself may be nonsense, or largely Latin, as in Lorem ipsum.

FITALY is a keyboard layout specifically optimized for stylus or touch-based input. The design places the most common letters closest to the centre to minimize distance travelled while entering a word. The name, FITALY, is derived from the letters occupying the second row in the layout.

A text entry interface or text entry device is an interface that is used to enter text information in an electronic device. A commonly used device is a mechanical computer keyboard. Most laptop computers have an integrated mechanical keyboard, and desktop computers are usually operated primarily using a keyboard and mouse. Devices such as smartphones and tablets mean that interfaces such as virtual keyboards and voice recognition are becoming more popular as text entry systems.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SMS language</span> Abbreviated slang used in text messaging

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dvorak keyboard layout</span> Keyboard layout

Dvorak is a keyboard layout for English patented in 1936 by August Dvorak and his brother-in-law, William Dealey, as a faster and more ergonomic alternative to the QWERTY layout. Dvorak proponents claim that it requires less finger motion and as a result reduces errors, increases typing speed, reduces repetitive strain injuries, or is simply more comfortable than QWERTY.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Keyboard layout</span> Arrangement of keys on a typographic keyboard

A keyboard layout is any specific physical, visual, or functional arrangement of the keys, legends, or key-meaning associations (respectively) of a computer keyboard, mobile phone, or other computer-controlled typographic keyboard.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neo (keyboard layout)</span> Keyboard layout

The Neo layout is an optimized German keyboard layout developed in 2004 by the Neo Users Group, supporting nearly all Latin-based alphabets, including the International Phonetic Alphabet, the Vietnamese language, and some Cyrillic alphabets.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colemak</span> 2006 keyboard layout for Latin-scripts

Colemak is a keyboard layout for Latin-script alphabets, designed to make typing more efficient and comfortable than QWERTY by placing the most frequently used letters of the English language on the home row. Although it is superficially similar to QWERTY. Created on 1 January 2006, it is named after its inventor, Shai Coleman.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Typewise</span> Virtual keyboard featuring hexagonal keys

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References

  1. 1 2 "Definition of keysmash | Dictionary.com". www.dictionary.com. Retrieved 2020-03-10.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 McCulloch, Gretchen. (2020). Because Internet : Understanding the New Rules of Language. Thorndike Press. ISBN   978-1-4328-7307-3. OCLC   1138716342.
  3. Hemmat, Massùod (2021-05-16). "Haha's of the World: How to Laugh in 29 Languages?". Medium. Retrieved 2022-09-03.
  4. "Why do Turkish people not write "Hahaha" when they are emphasizing that they are laughing?" . Retrieved 2022-09-03.
  5. 1 2 Prem (2019-06-18). "Taylor Swift needs to do her homework if she wants to be a true ally to the LGBTQ+ community". www.laineygossip.com. Retrieved 2020-04-24.
  6. 1 2 3 "Our Language Is Evolving, 'Because Internet'." All Things Considered, 31 July 2019. Gale In Context: U.S. History, https://link-gale-com.ezproxy.library.astate.edu/apps/doc/A596564896/UHIC?u=akstateu1&sid=UHIC&xid=379fd2f8. Accessed 3 Apr. 2020.
  7. "What Does asdf Mean? | Slang by Dictionary.com". Everything After Z by Dictionary.com. Retrieved 2020-04-03.
  8. Ygartua, Hayden Tusa. Linguistic Feature Spread in Online Social Networks. Diss. University of Oregon, 2018, https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/24149/Final%20Thesis-Ygartua.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.
  9. 1 2 3 "What's The Story Behind Sksksk?". Everything After Z by Dictionary.com. 4 October 2019. Retrieved 2020-04-03.