I may be mistaken, but lately spelling seems to be a problem for more and more people. Not just on forums and IMs, but also in serious documentation, newspapers, advertisements and leaflets, even on television (although thankfully, not as prevalent as the others). Where does this come from? My generation got regular writing exercises, and we would get bad grades if we wrote the way people do now.
And it's not even about new words, internet memes or new spelling either. People don't seem to understand something straightforward like the difference between 'lose' and 'loose', 'then' and 'than'.
My theory is that after some time in affluence, a society stops caring about the old rules, and relies more on the fact that people can't be bothered to phone in every single spelling error, and be branded either a boring git or a grammar nazi. Without sounding like one, I think it's a matter of courtesy and respect to communicate in the same way as your audience, or if you don't know the audience make the communication as neutral as possible. This way you don't insult anyone, or intrude in anyone's business.
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