With the Oscars behind us, award season has officially ended. The season sparked some age-old questions, such as “who couldn’t predict that Colin Firth, Natalie Portman, Melissa Leo, and Christian Bale would all sweep the awards?,” “why does Anne Hathaway clap so much?,” and, of course, “Which two pop artists will engage in a bitter Twitter war over a demeaning comment on E!’s Fashion Police?”
While I cannot answer the first two, the last question describes the “feud” between Ciara and Rihanna. Ciara told Joan Rivers that, at a party after the Brit Awards, she ran into Rihanna who “wasn’t the nicest… it wasn’t the most pleasant run-in.”
Well, Rihanna would not stand for such slander and, in strict accordance with the proper rules of etiquette for a grown woman confronting defamation, took to Twitter to rear her angry red head. Thus, an illiterate catfight was born.
Rihanna: “My bad ci, did I 4get to tip u? #howrudeofme.”
Ciara: “Trust me Rhianna u dont want to see me on or off the stage.”
Rihanna: “U gangsta huh? Haaa…Good luck with bookin that stage u speak of.”
(Yada yada yada…)
Rihanna: “Ciara baby, I love u girl! U hurt my feelings real bad on TV! I’m heartbroken! That’s y I retaliated this way! So sorry! #letsmakeup”
Ciara: “Rhi u know its always been love since day 1! Doing shows/everything. you threw me off in that party! Apology accepted. Let’s chat in person.”
The main problem with Twitter is its pesky 140 character limit. However, numerous celebrities with Twitter accounts happen to write in complete sentences, or at least in complete words. When engaging in an argument, shouldn’t one at least wish to sound respectable? Where’s the ethos? Much like my problem with Shaq a few months back, these two proved in certain respects that they are quite aware of how to spell, but chose not to in all circumstances. “Apology accepted. Let’s chat in person” is a completely comprehensible statement, so why couldn’t Ciara spell out “you” or put an apostrophe in “don’t”? Similarly, Rihanna holds a certain fondness for replacing words with the letter they sound like and inserting a number into words to replace a syllable, but she put the appropriate apostrophe in “that’s” and accurately spelled out “retaliated.”
This purposeful illiteracy is what befuddles me. It’s akin to King George VI saying, “Oh, I speak perfectly well; I stammer because I choose to.” What’s the point of handicapping yourself?