I consider myself a pretty hip guy, but when did receiving a text message from a friend turn into solving the Da Vinci Code?
E-cryonyms, those silly little acronyms used in electronic messaging, seem to be gaining popularity every day. How these words assimilate themselves into popular culture is beyond me.
I get the basic ones. LOL means laughing out loud, which is an e-cronym I use often; even though I very rarely receive a message so hilarious it makes me laugh out loud. It’s just one of those things I guess.
Then there are the ones that pop up that everyone in the world knows except me. I hate those.
A friend once sent me a text-message that read something like this:
“I’m going home. WTF.”
Being of reasonable intelligence, I assumed this friend was telling me that he was going home, and would remain there on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
Makes sense, right?
“That’s a convenient e-cronym. A real time saver,” I thought to myself.
No one ever corrected me, BTW.
For the next few weeks, I would send my girlfriend text-messages that said things like, “Do you want to go to the movies? WTF,” or “When are you cooking dinner, WTF?”
WTF, by the way, does not stand for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. If you do not know what WTF stands for, you will not learn it from this column. Sorry.
If you need proof that the world is getting smaller, look no further than the Internet. Everyday our vocabulary grows and shifts, it’s truly a fascinating thing.
It’s getting tad a bit out hand, IMO.
Just for fun, I created my own e-cronym based on a popular catch phrase from some old 80’s cop movie.
“GAMMD!”
I sent it to a friend, curious to see if he could decode my e-slang.
To my surprise, he sent a text with the following message:
“No, YOU make MY day.”
I was LMFAO.