TPIAA

Tonight's Post Is About Acronyms. Within days of first getting internet access some 7 or 8 years ago, I was already peppering my e-mails with emoticons. As I became an avid user of AIM, I soon learned of all the acronyms that had become popular as a form of shorthand. My IMs started out as long, grammatically correct paragraphs, manually spell-checked before I hit the “send” button, but it soon proved impossible to maintain a conversation with anyone. Most people don't even separate the letters with periods let alone write out commonly abbreviated phrases. Many acronyms are common, but occasionally I still come across some new ones. Here's what I've encountered over the years.

LOL: “Laugh Out Loud” is the patriarch of all chat acronyms, the Papa Smurf of letters. It's the first one I learned, likely the first one anyone learns, and possibly the most commonly used.

WTF: Thanks to my friend Rey, who swore off swearing years ago, I always think of this as the edited version, “What the Freak?”, whenever I see it or use it myself. Of course, most people are using stronger language with this one and in a moderated forum, the argument over the intent of the “F” probably wouldn't receive much consideration from an administrator. If any acronym is used more than LOL, it's this one.

ROFLMAO: The offspring of ROFL and LMAO, “Rolling on the Floor Laughing My @$$ Off” doesn't get out as much as its parents and grandfather, because most people are lazy and would rather type 3 or 4 characters instead of 8. Still, if an occasion is hilarious enough, it may merit the stronger expression of laughter, possibly augmented by a smiling emoticon or two.

TTYL: “Talk to you later” is a common sign-off, although I tend to mix things up a bit with “Cya” or “L8rs”

AFK: “Away From Keyboard” doesn't see much use with more creative automated away messages, or users simply logging out. Similarly, BRB, “Be Right Back”, has shown some decline.

ASL?: The first time I contacted a friend with a screenname he was unfamiliar with, I received these three letters in response. I answered with a question mark and, a consummate player, he repeated the inquiry. When he finally spelled out “Age? Sex? Location?” after some more question marks, I quickly told him who I was, and thankfully never saw that acronym again.

IDDIJS: A while back, when I had less of a sense of humor about my perpetual bad luck, I coined this acronym, which stands for “I Don't Die; I Just Suffer”. I overcame this attitude to some degree, and while I still marvel at some of life's ironies, I'm learning to recognize the positive things as well.

WTCHOP?: I saw this on a message board earlier today, and it's not the first time I've seen it. Internet denizens can sometimes take on an elitist attitude, and I would never ask the meaning of something like this and demonstrate how unsavvy I am to the Comic Book Guy's of the world. So I broke down and Google™d it earlier this evening, and learned that it stands for ”What the Combat Hero Optimus Prime?”, apparently inspired by a message board poster who used the CHOP portion of the acronym. This may be one of the most specific and obscure acronyms out there, but even LOL had to start somewhere. Somehow though, I doubt even I'll be putting this one into practice any time soon.

MCF: I adopted the “Mysterious Cloaked Figure” persona for many reasons, from cloaking my “true” identity as a Neurotic O.R.B.(Obscure Reference Boy) to simply writing a character in an online RPG(Role Playing Game). A search for “MCF” at the time of this writing yields 7,430,000 results, but the first one referring to me doesn't appear until the third page. I'll have to keep writing until my own acronym rivals the LOLs and WTFs of the world.