One thing that piques my interest most regarding our language is the manner of how we communicate. It has proven to be flexible and adaptable to whatever media we are using to convey our messages to our intended audiences.
Back in the old days when letters are the go-to means of communication, people are able to relay to the recipient paragraphs after paragraphs of thoughts and topics. There's an endless number of subject the sender could choose to talk about. The only limits are his supply of paper and the ink in his pen. The sender can babble about anything and everything at the same time. Then when the telegram was the medium, shorter messages were use to send texts.
Going on with the changes through time, the means also evolved. Letters became emails telegraphs became text messages and so on. Being online nowadays, you are bombarded with tons of information from every point in the world. I find it fascinating that everyone now shares a common lingo and everybody seems to understand each other when it comes to the messages involved with everyday exchanges.
As I surf the web on a daily basis, there are these words that are constantly floating and are being thrown around in social media and across the internet itself. Let me share with you the words that I frequently encounter in a day-to-day surfing session.
Acronyms
An acronym as you know is a collection of the first letters of the words that are pertaining to something. NASA, FBI, NATO are some examples of acronyms. Surprisingly, radar and laser are also examples of acronym. Mind blown!
CTTO
CTTO means credit to the owner. Used commonly when sharing a photo or a picture content. It is a humble attempt to give credits to the owner of the original content. Funny thing is, users tend to use this without even attempting to actually find the source of the post they are sharing. It's somehow the "To Whom It May Concern" of posting. If you are fond using this one, please, just please try to link and credit the original source as much as possible.
FB
Unless you are living under a stone, or you are not from this era, you probably know what this 2 letter acronym stands for. Oh, you guessed it right. FB stands for FB. That one famous social networking site, yep that's the one.
IG
This stands for Instagram another networking site that is under by Facebook. This platform is dedicated for photo-blogging. Users share photo and short videos to incite interactions.
LOL
This one is so popular that it can be seen anywhere. And I mean anywhere. The usage of LOL which means Laughing Out Loud is just widespread that it crosses every media known to man. And a lot of people use this on the daily. Isn't that right @immaryandmerry and @bheng620 ? Also, this seems contagious so beware. Personally, I haven't seen anyone who used this and literally LAUGH OUT LOUD. And, I am still waiting for someone to literally LOL on a message. :)
OOTD
OOTD means Outfit of The Day. This is usually used in its hashtag form and is used to indicate what the user is wearing for the day. I could not seem to find where OOTD was first used but the prominent usage of this can be observed in Instagram. While on the subject, can you share your OOTD? The best one deserves some kind of reward. ;)
OP
I see this one being used mostly in photo sharing sites and in several forum type sites. It means Original Poster which somehow acknowledges the first person to post a certain content.
OTL
This one's kinda fun. It may not really belong to the acronyms for the simple reason that, IT IS NOT an acronym. So what on Earth is this? It's an emoticon. If you look at it intently you will start to see a man groveling on the ground. The 'O' is its head the T represents its back with his hands on the ground and the L depicts its legs and feet with the corner of the L as its knees. Can you see it? This is commonly used showing a sense of defeat or giving up.
RT
This one seems to be a network specific term since it means Retweet. Primarily used in Twitter, this one means to Tweet again another Tweet on your feed. The tweet may be by another user or one's own.
TBH
They said that TBH means to be honest, and TBH, I'm impressed. LOL And this acronym still has another form, TBBH. TBBH means to be brutally honest, for when you can't be honest enough. TBBH, I really like your OOTD today, don't ever wear that again. :D BT dubs, I was JK.
TBT
Pretty much like OOTD, this one is particularly used in its hashtag form. This also trended for some time a while back and it means Throwback Thursday. This is used with posting an old picture or just other relatable stuff from the past.
TL;DR
TLD:DR is used as a form of lowkey complaint. Technically means, Too Long, Didn't Read. I personally think that this one is just useless if not disrespectful. Why do you feel the need to comment if you will not take the time to read the thing you are commenting on? I mean, come on man! Speaking of which, I'll try to keep this short and brief. :)
TW
Just like FB, this one is specific to a networking site simply because it means Twitter. A microblogging platform that we use to be updated with news, shows, celebrities and etc. Twitter has been found a pretty effective tool when it cracked the news before any major network could even hear about it.
WFH
This one isn't new but has been so popular since last year. With many business opted to close down their physical offices due to this pandemic we are in, many were forced to Work From Home, hence WFH. It was already used before in the freelancing industry but with the surge of employees working from home the term began to be used as widespread as it has ever been.
YOLO
Meaning You Only Live Once. My first encounter with this acronym is when I was active on a fun site called 9gag.com. It is a site much like Instagram but instead of pictures of food and models, we share memes and interesting stuff. YOLO is used with postings of dangerous things that people do which are just borderline insane. In essence YOLO can be as simple as "seize the day" but since we all feed from exaggerations, it eventually evolved into doing stuff that you may do once in your life, including things you could literally do once in your life, since it may be the last thing you'd ever do.
YT
Another network specific term which means YouTube.
There are tons more of these that we can speak about but since this one is getting pretty long and I am trying to avoid the comment TL;DR, I will be saving some for another part.
Please feel free to add other acronyms below and let's have some fun with them. :)
Thank you for reading this and see you on the next one.
Lead image : Photo by Pixabay from Pexels
Sources :
https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-acronyms/
https://www.fluentu.com/blog/english/english-internet-slang/
The starting point of all achievement is desire." 😘