Is J.R. Smith a genuine gangster or just a Twit with poor spelling? The Denver Post’s Chris Dempsey reports Twitter posts from Nuggets G Smith have raised the ire of local fans as they are “written in a way that is commonly associated with the Bloods street gang.” To paraphase Homer Simpson, “they have micro-blogging street gangs on the internet now”.
On a post Sunday, Smith exclaimed “Vegas here I kome!” Last week he wrote that he “Kant wait to get bak in the swing of things.”
Words that would have a “C” in them are replaced with “K,” or if a word has both in them, the “C” is removed altogether. Smith has nearly 15,000 followers on his Twitter page.
A post last week, upon his release from jail, caused an online debate among Denver Post readers about the topic. Smith, at the time, thanked his fans and wrote, “I just Kame home. . . . I kouldnt have done it with out yall.”
…just kame home, kouldn’t wait to check kan’t stop the bleeding on my komputer…
I am consistently surprised that people are unaware that street gangs and drug gangs use youtube, Twitter and MySpace to talk amongst themselves. I discovered this in 2007 when I googled some names that popped up in neighborhood graffiti and saw photos, messages and even videos from the 20 year old drug dealers in my neighborhood posted daily and hourly, presumably from their ever present cell phones. Their photos and friends were all the people I see on the corner or sitting on the benches at the playground every afternoon.
given some of the things they write I’m pretty sure that they don’t know that what they type into twitter on their phone can be viewable by more than their friends who subscribe to their twitter feeds