Two teenagers from South Korea took the title of fastest texters in the world during an international competition in New York City on Thursday. 17 year-old Bae Yeong Ho and 18 year-old Ha Mok Min competed against contenders from a dozen countries for the ultimate title... who can text the fastest?
The team of 17-year-old Bae Yeong Ho and 18-year-old Ha Mok Min went thumb-to-thumb against competitors from a dozen countries to win the title in a competition Thursday in New York City.
The competition, the LG Mobile World Cup, took place in Manhattan's Gotham Hall, tested competitors on both speed and accuracy. The drills consisted of copying words and phrases in one's native language off a monitor correctly, with no typos or abbreviations, and as fast as possible with the required capitalization and punctuation. Some words were intentionally misspelled to test alertness.
The race against the clock required texters to text for two solid minutes at a time, with the Koreans coming out with a 20 second lead towards the end in the "Race of Death" that lasted an hour. The winning team took home a prize of $100,000.
Bae, the Korean national champion of texting for 2008 and 2009, said "New York sure is an active, lively city!" while enjoying the admiration of spectators. Instead of blowing their winnings on clothes or cars, both plan on using the money for education. Bae is a bass singer and is saving his $50,000 share of the winnings to study and become an opera singer. His teammate Ha said she will save to study and become an engineer.
We can only imagine how sore their thumbs must have been afterwards. How fast can you text? Do you think you could win a competition?
via AP
