do u believe everything you read?

words are powerful. ever since i was a little girl i knew it. i would read my dictionary for hours on end. what? isn't that what every only child does? read ahead on my spelling homework and even kept my language arts books in the summer so i could read all the stuff we didn't cover during the school year. I would learn all different ways to say the same thing.
i would push myself to use a new word in a sentence. then i started applying what i'd read to everyday conversation. it was my way of letting my imagination run free. i could say things in such colorful language that it would literally liven up the conversation ( in my mind anyway).
so now we live in an age where ppl speak "text-ese" and the art of the complete sentence has been lost. oh i'm not judging, i'm guilty as well. but haven't we gotten lazy? we condense words and make new ones. check the new additions to the merriam webster dictionary: vlog and webisode. facebook, twitter, bbm, aim and countless other outlets have created and continued to foster our unwillingness to type a few extra letters and punctuate our thoughts. i guess i'm just scared that one day there will be people that claim to speak english but wouldn't know how to read this blog.
but seriously, has it cheapened the message? have we, in our laziness, created a language in which the cues we've grown to recognize no longer exist? or have we inflected the same cues into this new speech, perhaps we've even created new ones. ever been chatting to someone and the message gets misconstrued? yes, emoticons help but is sarcasm easily read? what about discontent?
these are questions that come up when i go to my local quik chek to order a wrap. u don't get to talk to the ppl making ur sandwich now. you gotta tell a computer to tell the sandwich maker what to make. sure if u want extra this or that, there's a button for that. but what if u have an allergy to something, is there a button for that? my point is, you'd still need to speak to the sandwich maker to convey the need for something additional.
am i the only one that wants more than a text message? a pregnant teen tells her mom she's pregnant over text message. a celebrity blogger reports he's been assaulted via twitter. facebook status updates are the new grapevine. words are so powerful, still. even when they're broken. i'm sentimental about speech.