I hadn’t heard of this before, but I think I can see how they’re getting there. With no punctuation, you have to infer the emotional detail from the context. If you add a period, it can be perceived as specifying that you’re using a flatter, less excited tone.
Compare:
Grandma’s coming this weekend
Yay
To this:
Grandma’s coming this weekend
Yay.
On top of that, these kids are used to using emoticons and such to indicate a variety of emotional shadings, rather than just an exclamation mark - so deliberately specifying the flattest, least interested emotional load could very well read as just waiting for the conversation to be over.
I hadn’t heard of this before, but I think I can see how they’re getting there. With no punctuation, you have to infer the emotional detail from the context. If you add a period, it can be perceived as specifying that you’re using a flatter, less excited tone.
Compare:
Grandma’s coming this weekend
To this:
Grandma’s coming this weekend
On top of that, these kids are used to using emoticons and such to indicate a variety of emotional shadings, rather than just an exclamation mark - so deliberately specifying the flattest, least interested emotional load could very well read as just waiting for the conversation to be over.
“Yay” is an exclamation so even using no punctuation instead of an exclamation point could convey a flat and therefore sarcastic tone.