​Is the Innanet RUINING teh English Language??? ¯\(°_o)/¯

There exists a certain paranoia that the web will somehow destroy the English language as we all start communicating solely in LOLs and smileys. But seen another way, the linguistic tricks we've enlisted to portray attitude and action, tone and meaning through text online are just the natural evolution of the written word--a way to adapt to the absence of facial cues and recreate the quirks of IRL conversation in the contextless vacuum of a chat window.