Jejemon () is a popular culture phenomenon in the Philippines. The '' Philippine Daily Inquirer'' describes Jejemons as a "new breed of hipster who have developed not only their own language and written text but also their own subculture and fashion."

Origins

This style of shorthand typing arose through the short messaging service, in which each text message sent by a cellphone is limited to 160 characters, evident in popular phone models in the early 2000s such as the Nokia 5110. As a result, an " SMS language" developed in which words were shortened in order to fit the 160-character limit. However, some jejemons are not really "conserving" characters; instead, they are lengthening their message. On April 14, 2010, on a Filipino Tumblr page, a post about vice presidential candidate Jejomar Binay indicated that Binay was the Jejemon's preferred vice presidential candidate, complete with a fake poster with him called "Makki Autors". Later the use of word ''jejemon'' to refer to such people made rounds in various Filipino

internet message board An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are often longer than one line of text, and are at least tempor ...

s. The word ''Jejemon'' is a portmanteau of the Japanese animated series

Pokémon (an abbreviation for in Japan) is a Japanese media franchise managed by The Pokémon Company, founded by Nintendo, Game Freak, and Creatures (company), Creatures, the owners of the trademark and copyright of the franchise. In terms of ...

and ''jeje'' as an expression of laughter. Such short-handed language is not limited to Filipinos: Thais use "5555" to denote "hahahaha," since the number 5 in Thai language is pronounced as "ha."

Demographics

The Jejemons are said to be the new ''yoyoyo~'', a term used for Filipinos of the lower income class. The parameters of being classified as a Jejemon are still unclear, and how the different "levels" of "Jejemonism" are reached, although there are named levels such as "mild," "moderate" and "severe" or "terminal."

Language

The sociolect of the Jejemons, called ''Jejenese'', is derived from English, Filipino and their code-switched variant, Taglish. It has its own, albeit unofficial, orthography, known as ''Jejebet'', which uses the Filipino variant of the

Roman alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...

Arabic numerals Arabic numerals are the ten numerical digits: , , , , , , , , and . They are the most commonly used symbols to write Decimal, decimal numbers. They are also used for writing numbers in other systems such as octal, and for writing identifiers ...

and other special characters. Words are created by rearranging letters in a word, alternating capitalization, over-usage of the letters H, X or Z. Superfluous as well as the presence of silent letters characterize its spelling convention. It has similarities with Leetspeak, primarily the alphanumeric nature of its writing.

Reaction

Several Facebook fan pages were created both in support and against the group. Celebrities such as Alessandra de Rossi, Ces Drilon, and

Lourd de Veyra Lourd Ernest Hanopol de Veyra (; born February 11, 1975) is a Filipino musician, emcee, poet, journalist, TV host, broadcast personality and activist who became famous as the vocalist of the Manila-based jazz rock band Radioactive Sago Proj ...

have condemned the wholesale ridicule of the subculture. Due to the sudden existence of jejemons, 'Jejebusters' were created, a group of internet grammar vigilantes, typically Filipinos, dedicating their internet lives towards the eradication of jejetyping and jejemon existence. YouTube videos were also uploaded parodying the Jejemons, connecting them to the 2010 election campaign. Edited television advertisements of

Nacionalista Party The Nacionalista Party (Filipino and Spanish: ''Partido Nacionalista''; ) is the oldest political party in both the Philippines and in Southeast Asia in general. It is responsible for leading the country throughout the majority of the 20th ce ...

proclaiming their disdain, and an edited photograph of Gilberto Teodoro with him holding a sign saying that the Jejemons should be "brought back to elementary school" went viral. In 2010, the Filipino GMA Network broadcast the situational comedy '' JejeMom'', headlined by Eugene Domingo. In the same year, the late comedian Dolphy starred and produced the film ''Father Jejemon''. As part of the pre-school year clean-up of schools for the upcoming 2010–11 school year, the Department of Education (DepEd) strongly discourages students from using Jejemon spelling and grammar, especially in text messaging. Communicating with others using Jejemon "language" is said to cause deterioration of young Filipino students’ language skills.

Decline and a change of definition

From early 2013 onwards, with the rise of smartphones which began to overtake feature phones in terms of sales in the country, the phenomenon seems to have made a gradual decline in mainstream popularity. Some social media accounts use such spellings to this date, but most of them are used for sarcasm. The term "jejemon" would gradually shift definition to a pejorative term to describe a stereotype of poorly educated young people wearing hip-hop clothing, roughly similar to the British slang term chav for sportswear.

References