The article is about text messaging, not forum posting. The difference between the two is in the level of formality. When you're messaging your friend, you recognise that it's not a formal situation, so you're free to type casually. Conversely, when you're posting in the forums (especially Discussion (but not so much with clan boards)), you're engaging in a much less casual and much more formal context.

Obviously, this is a video-game forum with a lot of kids so there are people who type and spell like shit, even in this formal context. That doesn't disprove this theory though.

IRC links well with this topic. Nobody in IRC uses proper grammar. If you took people that type correctly on the forums and looked at how they typed in IRC, you'd see a big difference. People in IRC are closer and so they act less formally. The reason that we might perceive people who type properly in IRC and in texts as insincere or less friendly is because of that disconnect between the level of closeness and the level of formality. You're expected to not act so 'robotic' in such a casual environment. Makes sense to me.

The one thing about the study that honestly bothers me is the messages they kept using a as a reference for texting. Of course you're going to seen like an emotionless robot putting period after a one or two word response. On the other had if you write out and actual sentence and add a period its a whole different story. I personally think that this study was flawed by the researchers going into it with a biased outlook from the get go. It would have also been nice if they actually took their subject sample from more than one place and age group. I like how they pointed out that people didn't react negatively to it when it was a note with a period, of course because once again it isn't a damn two words response.

Also why didn't they post examples of their "hand written notes" like they did with the text? Trying to hide their bias once again maybe?