'text-speak'

This is outrageous! Seriously, is this what our language is coming to? I admit that I do the occasional "lol" or "brb" but have you ever tried to actually read "text-speak"? You can't. My freshman year in college I had a friend who would have me look over his papers. Instead of "you" he would have "u" along with countless other shorthand abbreviations. Needless to say, this friend of mine dropped out of school after his sophomore year - too much video game playing... It was annoying. It really makes me sad if this is the way things are going with the English language.