Moss, a Carleton graduate and reporter for the Hawthorn Daily Corn Husker and News, has become known for his well-researched, balanced and articulate pieces on the plight of the common man in his home town of Hawthorn, Saskatchewan.

But as of late, his colleagues have noticed his ethic start to slip.

“Steve used to always have dark circles under his eyes from long nights of research, followed by early mornings of chugging double-doubles in between follow-up phone calls before deadline. Now, he comes in at 9:30 every morning after his yoga class, drinks nothing but water and he’s as happy as the day he started. It makes me sick,” said crime reporter and closet Marxist Bob Girardin.

“It seems he’s gotten into the habit of just copying and pasting from Wikipedia,” said health and education reporter Nick Mercado. “I know it’s a small town paper, but come on … some of our readers went to college. You have to try a little bit. Even [sports editor Lou] Wallace still drags his fat ass to volleyball games once in a while to see who the up-and-comers are … okay, maybe he just does it to check out high school girls. But at least he’s out there.”

Moss was called upon by editor-in-chief Rick Quentin to cover the annual charity barbecue and pig roast. The event included some very interesting goings-on, none of which were mentioned in Moss’ article.

“I just can’t believe he came, and there wasn’t one mention of the goat bingo. That’s our biggest draw,” said event organizer Barb Mikowski. “He was here for maybe ten minutes and he didn’t even have a note pad or one of those fancy voice recordin’ doo-dads.”

According to Mikowski, whose paunch could explode out of her pants at any second, goat bingo is a game in which participants pay for a square on a grid, which is drawn on a large patch of grass. Then a goat is then set loose on the grid and whosever square it defecates on first wins. It is an age-old tradition in Hawthorn which Moss, drunk with the power of the media, chose to ignore.

Quentin is less than impressed with Moss’ flagrant disregard for what the people of the town find captivating.

“The article more or less writes itself. You show up, interview the idiot getting pies thrown at him, eat hot dogs till you get meat sweats, get a couple quotes from locals and get your ass back to the newsroom. But Steve’s article is mainly a long diatribe on the sorry state of condiments. I know what it feels like when they run out of sauerkraut. It’s a sad moment for everyone. But it’s not news,” said Quentin.

Online chatting became a meaningless, emotionless void Sunday after eighteen-year-old Veronica Hardin, better known as kittenmittens87, used LOL in place of a period after every sentence of a 45-minute-long chat session with friend and confidant Becca Feldham.

The result of said conversation is the exacerbation of every ounce of emotion possible to express through the internet. Millions of users across the globe attempted to become angry or hurt by the killing of feelings online, but were unable to do so. Experts are calling the phenomenon “emotional constipation.”

“I don’t know how to describe what’s going on inside me. I used to know what joy was like, when someone would email me a video of a monkey drinking its own urine. I could reply LOL, and that was enough to let them know I was giggling to myself in the comfort of my basement,” said Martin Van Grumsbold, a sad, sad man who still lives with his mother.

“Now, I just stare at the screen, unable to relay to my girlfriend in Russia, who is a model, by the way, that I’m making a very clever pun about Greedo shooting first by using a colon and a capital P.”

Hardin has been using Microsoft’s instant messaging monolith MSN Messenger since its release in 1999, when she was only a child. Using the software, she conversed with friends, and soon picked up on popular internet shorthand; like to indicate happiness, to indicate discontent, and the ever popular LOL, an abbreviation for Laughing Out Loud.

“When we started chatting online, it was so innocent,” said Feldham.

“Those little things used to mean something.”

The arrangement of symbols to create images representative of feelings in the online world is known as an emoticon, a portmanteau of emotion and icon. But now, the emotion has been squarely left behind, thanks to Hardin’s flagrant overuse of LOL.

“We were just kids, fooling around with the computer when we wanted to get away from doing homework. I had no idea it would come to this,” said Hardin, as she wiped a tear rolling down her cheek.

“I didn’t really laugh out loud at all,” said Hardin. “And now, I’ll never have the chance again.”

Internet experts and grammar Nazis have long predicted the demise of communicating over the internet since online chatting became popular in the mid-nineties with the rise of chat software like ICQ, MSN Messenger and Internet Relay Chat (IRC). Silicon valley communications expert William Reichert couldn’t be happier with the situation.

“The day has finally come where people will realize that the internet is not for such frivolous things, and get back to its one true purpose,” said Reichert. “Which of course, is massively parallel computing to discover life on other planets. Or maybe the perfect amount of cheese for microwave nachos. That’s always been a life goal of mine.”