i mispell stuph on porpoise!

I got a random IM last night from someone who asked if I was "always proper in my spelling," or something like that. I seem to recall having received similar comments in the past. Now, there was a time when I was a real stickler about spelling and grammar, but I've since come to realize it doesn't really matter that much as long as you can understand what people are saying. I tend to think, however, that bad spelling is the result of ignorance and/or laziness. If I DO know the correct spellings for words, am I supposed to purposely misspell them when fourteen-year-olds randomly IM me? I'm also somewhat puzzled by the number of young people who think it's weird that I'm 26 years old. I know several people my age or older who use IM fairly regularly. Maybe they just don't accept random IMs. Or maybe I somehow seem younger than I am in text conversations. Who knows?