Huh? The Facebook post said, “IMO that picture makes him look better than IRL.” What is IMO? I might obfuscate? In my orbit? I am outraged?
And IRL? Did she mean he looked better than imaginative rotund lollygaggers? Or irritating round logs? Or industrious reliable locksmiths?
I gave up and did an internet search. Aha. IMO means “in my opinion.” What was I thinking? No one is ever outraged on Facebook.
And IRL means “in real life”—as opposed to digital or virtual life where we all spend our time nowadays. That makes sense, though I bet whoever he is, he looks better than imaginative rotund lollygaggers too.
The use of acronyms has been expanding since the dawn of online communication. Texting is probably part of the reason. It’s hard to type out words on a cellphone screen. At least it is for me.
Those who were teenagers in the early days of online communication might be partly to blame too. They came up with PAW (parents are watching), PITR (parent in the room), KPC (keeping parents clueless) and a host of other secret codes to hide private chats from parents. And they’re so secret that you can look them up online like I just did.
X might share the blame for the prevalence of abbreviations in online communication too. Tweets can only be 280 characters long these days and up until 2017, they were limited to just 140 characters. Users were forced to find shorter ways to insult each other.
I canceled my X account back when it was still Twitter because, no matter what you’ve heard about me, I’m not mean enough to be on there. IMO, 280 characters is more than enough and if they reverted to 140 characters—or 10—the world would be a better place. Okay, maybe I am mean enough.
Whatever the reason, acronyms are here to stay in online communication, so I decided it was time I learn the language. I did a search and found a list of 100 texting and internet abbreviations. And I was happy to see some old familiar ones on it, for example TGIF (thank God it’s Friday), ASAP (as soon as possible), BOGO (buy one, get one) and FYI (for your iguana.) Just seeing if you were paying attention.
But most of them were new to me. ELI5 means “explain like I’m 5.” ICYMI is “in case you missed it.” And YOLO means “you only live once,” which may explain why you don’t have time to type entire words out.
And then there’s MCM (Man Crush Monday), WBW (Way Back Wednesday), TBT (Throwback Thursday) and FF (Follow Friday.) AFAIK (As far as I know) Tuesday is JPT, (Just Plain Tuesday.)
I’m proud to say I was able to guess a few of the unfamiliar abbreviations. I figured out that TMI means “too much information” because that’s so obvious on social media.
And I guessed MSG means “message,” though I’d be careful using that one because it could be confused for “massage” and someone might take that wrong.
I thought TL;DR meant “time for lunch Dorothy Rosby.” But no. It means “too long; didn’t read.” And then there’s TMA;DR which means “too many acronyms; didn’t read.” Not really. I made that up. But I think it will catch on.