I have been instructed to note for the record that C. Roast Beef Kazenzakis, noted cartoon cat, has employed that very abbreviation.
I have an away message that reads "irrigating the sahara" for this purpose, myself.
yeah, "acronym"
Smartass. That's not internet-specific. Maybe "acr0nym."
oh, that's good!
could always do:
4kr0||'/|/|
but that's way too much to remember. needs an acronym. oh wait...
That Kotsko. Such a whiner.
They're TLAs - two- or three-letter acronyms. Or FLAs - and so forth, you get the idea...
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/
a href="http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/T/
TLA.html">http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/T/TLA.html
TLA: /T·L·A/, n.
[Three-Letter Acronym]
1. Self-describing abbreviation for a species with which computing terminology is infested.
2. Any confusing acronym. Examples include MCA, FTP, SNA, CPU, MMU, SCCS, DMU, FPU, NNTP, TLA. People who like this looser usage argue that not all TLAs have three letters, just as not all four-letter words have four letters. One also hears of ‘ETLA’ (Extended Three-Letter Acronym, pronounced /ee tee el ay/) being used to describe four-letter acronyms; the terms ‘SFLA’ (Stupid Four-Letter Acronym), ‘LFLA’ (Longer Four Letter Acronym), and VLFLA (Very Long Five Letter Acronym) have also been reported. See also YABA.
The self-effacing phrase “TDM TLA” (Too Damn Many...) is often used to bemoan the plethora of TLAs in use. In 1989, a random of the journalistic persuasion asked hacker Paul Boutin “What do you think will be the biggest problem in computing in the 90s?” Paul's straight-faced response: “There are only 17,000 three-letter acronyms.” (To be exact, there are 26^3 = 17,576.) There is probably some karmic justice in the fact that Paul Boutin subsequently became a journalist.
ash
[' ']
None of those examples corresponds to what bitch is talking about, though, ash. TLA is incorrect!
You know Ben, instead of sniping, you could come up with a suggestion.
If you're not too busy j/o, that is.
As an aside, the jargon file was a famous online compendium of all these and more and has a place in internet folk lore:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/
Your suggestion of acr0nyms is a good one
How come (you|(none of (you|yall))) can't give Adam a job? Data entry? WTF? Dsquared has assured the world that engineers like me suck, fine. But man, to get that AK mind working on the problems I (and many others) find interesting... geez! So many tech people suck.
E-breviations
Hackronyms
Codons
My suggestion is that everyone read the Jargon File for a while, since, as Danny implies, it is tres cool.
None of those examples corresponds to what bitch is talking about, though, ash. TLA is incorrect!
AHEM.
People who like this looser usage argue that not all TLAs have three letters, just as not all four-letter words have four letters. One also hears of ‘ETLA’ (Extended Three-Letter Acronym, pronounced /ee tee el ay/) being used to describe four-letter acronyms; the terms ‘SFLA’ (Stupid Four-Letter Acronym), ‘LFLA’ (Longer Four Letter Acronym), and VLFLA (Very Long Five Letter Acronym) have also been reported. See also YABA.
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/Y/YABA.html
YABA: /ya´b@/, n.
[Cambridge] Yet Another Bloody Acronym. Whenever some program is being named, someone invariably suggests that it be given a name that is acronymic. The response from those with a trace of originality is to remark ironically that the proposed name would then be ‘YABA-compatible’. Also used in response to questions like “What is WYSIWYG?” See also TLA.
Since, traditionally, TLA has always been used in the cases of LOL, J/K, YMMV, etc. my response was just fine, dude. The only case listed above which you could argue that a broad definition of TLA would NOT cover would be ROTFLMAO, which is simply an extended version of LOL. You could, were you nitpicky and simultaneously clueless or merely mildly insane about trivial intellectual one-upmanship, describe them as chat-ese. (Or, in sheer desperation IM-ese, which sounds like something you pick up in a bathroom in Tijuana.)
They would still, however, also be classed as traditional TLAs. We could take this up with Kibo or Fluffy, or say, the Linux Kernel Mailing list if you're feeling somehow traditionalist, innovative and OCDish at the same time. Also, if you want your ass reamed so badly you won't be able to walk for a week. (And SURELY, the LKML is FULL to the gills with anti-social, high-IQ, OCDish nitpickers who get really annoyed about this sort of thing. And who really REALLY understand grammar as a generalized case.)
So, therefore, NYAH. Also, PTTTTTHHBBBBBBBBBBBBTTHHH. And bite me.
ash
['It ate my HREF!']
My lovely and talented girlfriend notes that two kinds of abbreviations have been intermingled, in that "lol" and "j/k" are typical of your basic AOLer, while "ymmv" and (not present) "yhbt, yhl, hand" are more USENETty in origin.
It is possible that time, that great leveller, has eroded some of these distinctions, and brought low what was once great even as it elevates mediocrities, but is not our shared cultural heritage worthy of not just remembrance but defense against such depredations?
I would accept Kibo as an outside authority in this matter, but only if we get Matt McIrvin to explain his judgment.
is not our shared cultural heritage worthy of not just remembrance but defense against such depredations?
. . . . naah.
in that "lol" and "j/k" are typical of your basic AOLer, while "ymmv" and (not present) "yhbt, yhl, hand" are more USENETty in origin.
Excepting that LOL, for instance, was popular back in 1983, and only latterly became classified as 'degraded', when the cool kids stopped using it. The AOhell versus Usenet distinction is a time-dependent product of the middle 1990's.
It is possible that time, that great leveller, has eroded some of these distinctions, and brought low what was once great even as it elevates mediocrities, but is not our shared cultural heritage worthy of not just remembrance but defense against such depredations?
Well, you'd think, except that you're, um, chatting on a board powered by HTML which even a three-year-old could write, talking mostly to people who are not bit-twiddlers and who would not have gone to the trouble to get on USENet or anything else except as part of being assigned an undergrad account in say, 1988. And many of the abbreviations came into existence beyond, besides or away from USENet at places like Compu$ucks or Genie or FIDO or whatnot.
The functionality of the cultural heritage has been folded INTO and replaced by the good old interwebs.
Trying to preserve, or rather EMBALM, USENet usage and ONLY USENet usage circa 1988 or something as viewed through the lens of 1995 is utterly sub-optimal, excepting as personal memory or hitorical remembrance. Especially since most of that usage was pre-degraded before embalming.
I would accept Kibo as an outside authority in this matter, but only if we get Matt McIrvin to explain his judgment.
Go to town dude.
ash
['HAND!']
j/o sounds like a good american version of the brits p/o. love it. Also like smd, which is best when said by a woman.
her: j/o!
him: shut yer bloody gob you cow!
her: just j/o! and you can smd, mister!
Here's some possibilities:
txt
or leet
I think internet slang probably does derive from leet speak.
I'm partial to "foad" and "gpuar" myself, but I'm very serious-minded.
oh man, i guess i'm not a cool kid after all... i don't know what j/k means! can someone enlighten me??
The LOL of hallowed usenet days and the LOL of the AOLers (& eternal september) mean different things. The former meant "You're cracking me up!" while the latter means "Just kidding" (or, more precisely, "I've got to say 'LOL' because I'm not a good enough writer to make my benign intentions clear in a more elegant way").
just kidding?
I've got to say 'LOL' because I'm not a good enough writer to make my benign intentions clear in a more elegant way
precisely. frequently, '' is used in the same way.
one vote for 'e-breviations.' that is, if we want to keep all our cyber-terminology within a cogent "e-"/"cyber-" framework, which i'm not sure that we do. it's getting annoying. but hey! consistency for constistency's sake! hurrah!
I remain a solid defender of lol, if only b/c it looks so beautifully architectural, especially in lower-case sans-serif fonts.
Ben, origins surely matter; on the other hand, one describes the language as it is used in the present day. YMMV has crossed over from usenet; the other examples you cite, not so much. At least, I don't recognize them and I am clearly the authority on all things internet.
(Ducking, running off.)
Oh, and also, "yabas" is kind of cool, I like that one.
It's so much worse than all that! When you get past the TLA into the phonetic spellings and substitutions of numbers for letters and whatever in complete sentences, there are at least 3 that I know to be THE official terminology these days, depending on context. One is "chaq" or chat acronyms. The other is "hax0r" -- and the last is "leetspeak" (or elite speak -- first started by snobby gamers and now extended generally to chat-a-holics). Microsoft even put out an article to help parents translate their teens' chatspeak to make sure they weren't talking about illegal activities. Link here: http://www.microsoft.com/athome/...en/
kidtalk.mspx "A parent's primer to computer slang
Understand how your kids communicate online to help protect them"
This is making my eyes hurt. Just FYI.
My suggestion is to call these abbreviations zips. "I didn't know that zip." "There should be a zip for 'get a clue'."
I don't use them much because I am that sort of curmudgeonly older person, but they amuse me.
The word is expressive (with reference to a classic file-compression utility) and also honors George Kingsley Zipf, who documented the tendency for the frequent words in a language to be shorter than the infrequent ones.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Wozzis about not being interested in USENET? My God, the old USENET's yet to be beat as an online conversation medium. Just think, if we were a usenetty society instead of a bloggy one, we wouldn't be dependent on queen-bee posts and reaction comments, and if we wanted to post on a new topic altogether, we wouldn't have to start our own "talking blind into the ether" blogs. We wouldn't have to jump from blog to blog to find other people's starter posts, and we'd be free of the "quit harshing on my cozy salon groove" sensibility that pervades so many blogs. We'd also be free of this ownership sense that turns people defensive of the blogs they frequent. There wasn't "my" rec.arts.books or "my" soc.men.
Another good thing about USENET was that so many smart assholes lived there, which meant that they were willing to step in combatively and make a good point or slice apart bad argument without much fear of pissing people off, and unless they ran foul of stated rules, they were impossible to turn off. You could ignore or listen as you pleased. You might decide they were total jerks and completely irritating, but you had to give credit where it was due. It was a lovely meritocracy. And it was valuable. Threads stayed alive on the first screen as long as they were alive, and the parties most interested in tearing the meat off particular bones could go to it, take a break, and come back another time to summarize and refine. It was a terrific medium for debating serious questions. The best improvement I've seen on that is Slashdot comments, where smart readers' willingness to read & rate comments quickly does some sorting work for you. Unfortunately, unless you've got a very bright & rabid readership, the rating system is either useless or a popularity contest, so it's not something that translates well to other fora.
So here we go, b. I think this is essentially the answer to your question. You're talking to someone from USENET, not someone who's out to piss you off or cramp your blog. If this actually were USENET, I wouldn't just respond to your posts. I could take my arguments separate by starting new threads, still within in the context of a group conversation, without the maintenance headache and time commitment of a blog. My intent isn't to wait at the door with a tennis racquet to do you in the minute you step out. But -- despite your tolerance -- I think this isn't really a suitable medium for conversation as pugnacious and freewheeling as we used to find on USENET. Unfortunately, it's what we've currently got, and (possibly unfortunately for you), you frequently post on subjects I'm interested in. (I don't always post to disagree with you, btw.) Ain't nothing personal.
There should also be one for "you must need a dose of the Big Foam Clue-Bat." (Go look, you know you wanna... http://ars.userfriendly.org/cart...0&mode=classic)
Work has been challenging today. Wanting to take said bat to a room of 30 people who are bickering over dates on an arbitrary calendar is a sign that I should get the rest of the day off.
And my vote is definitely for YABAs, if only for the Flinstones feeling.
The trolls are about ten million times better on Usenet, too. I have a theory that it's impossible to troll well on a blog, which accounts for the degraded nature of web-based "trolls" (who hardly deserve the name).
I don't know from Usenet. But I literally discovered the internet in 1999. I also got my first mobile phone in 2002.
The end! $5.
Don't you have a play to be writing, Drymala? (Has anyone ever called you "dry walla"?)
I was actually going to post about my writing procrastination in Kostko's confessional. But I'm sort of hogging the confessional as it is.
And wow, that's a good one. Next: ask me where I'm going with that gun in my hand.
Amy, that makes sense. It also explains the recurring "that's not the best way to make this argument" argument. From my pov, the way I make arguments clearly is pretty successful; bitch gets a lot of hits, etc. The posts are *already* published, not just ideas about how I *might* publish something. So all the "there are better ways to write that" stuff just makes me wanna say, "well then, go do that."
Having said that, I do like comment threads (obviously) and the way that they can be used to shed new light on a post topic or whatever; but yes, the point isn't argument for argument's sake.
Re. trolls, the other reason it's difficult to troll effectively on blogs is that there is such a thing as "delete post" and "ban user."
And the "y" isn't pronounced like it reads; it's a schwa sound.
Hey Joe--where you goin' with that gun in your hand? Mexico? Are you going to Mexico?
(I was reading the "y" as being pronounced like the "i" in "bit".)
Re. trolls, the other reason it's difficult to troll effectively on blogs is that there is such a thing as "delete post" and "ban user."
Oh, you can do that on Usenet too (killfiling), but that's not what I meant. Your good troll is entirely distinct from what passes for trolls these days.
I wish I lived in your city so I could fight you right now.
Could you go down to LA, Joe, and whip on J/K for us? He's an atheist and homophobe.
Sure, but can he sing?
Just Kidding is a wha-?
An acronym. Keep up.
*blink*
Just Kidding = j/k. C'mon, people.
I'll head down to LA and beat up anyone you like, if you buy my plane ticket.
Sloppy Joe. Joe Shmoe. Average Joe. Any old Joe. *sigh*
Yo Joe, Joe Mama, Joe Six-Pack...
bitch, I'm still wondering how I can lay down the hurt on Just Kidding. And how Just Kidding can have a theological worldview or feelings toward gays.
Wait. Wait. I think I got it.
j/k is lowercase, and J/K is uppercase, right? Right? So J/K is a name? Of a person?
Wait. Is it John Kerry? Is that who I'm supposed to beat up?
Dude. You'd think I was drunk. Or at least Tokyo.
J, who sometimes goes by K, and is referred to as J/K, is an asshat who's been hanging around Kotsko's.
Too late. I already beat up John Kerry.
You and everyone else.
It was weird; I started punching him, and he didn't hit me back for, like, weeks.
It took me one hour and 32 minutes to come up with that joke. Zing!
b, I'm on. ON. By which I mean, line.
A-ha! I agree completely with Amy!
M3 t00, baby!
You could ignore or listen as you pleased. You might decide they were total jerks and completely irritating, but you had to give credit where it was due. It was a lovely meritocracy.
Mostly. Depends on which end you're in. (Which came out the first time as 'end your end'. Boy, do I have a headache.) At any rate, one should also note that the urm, kinder? politer? softer? people tended to run away like whipped dogs when their toddled up to the keyboard to post their favorite theory. Which indicates to me, really, that there a lot of people who do not, actually, like strenuous argumentation. Unless they're winning. And dammit, they're right!
Which, given the number of people who like/liked USENet and the number of people who like carefully restricted lists and blogs and stuff is possibly indicative of the intellectual state of society.
But -- despite your tolerance -- I think this isn't really a suitable medium for conversation as pugnacious and freewheeling as we used to find on USENET.
As a practical matter, the old scheme was UUCP/BBS-based and people tended to post to privatedly-owned and controlled boards, and then the unified news hierarchy took over, which lead to the USENet you know and love. Thereafter the explosion of blogs, with the comments to a single thread lead off by a primary poster/owner, has produced a reversion back to the older scheme. Complete with cliques, favorite boards, etc. etc.
And a frequent dislike for drifting too far away conventional wisdom, even if, or maybe particularly if, conventional wisdom is silly or stupid.
Also, you've got these tiny little goddamn text boxes to contend with.
ash
['But what do I know, I am merely a wandering Gojira.']
I remain a solid defender of lol, if only b/c it looks so beautifully architectural, especially in lower-case sans-serif fonts.
Alas, using LOL automatically brands you as a 'newbie'. Social convention. Doesn't matter, since this isn't USENet.
YMMV has crossed over from usenet; the other examples you cite, not so much. At least, I don't recognize them and I am clearly the authority on all things internet.
YHBT == You Have Been Trolled
HAND == Have A Nice Day
FOAD == Fuck Off And Die (Aka, 'HTH! HAND! FOAD!')
GPUAR == Go Piss Up A Rope
Alas, I'm screwed, since I do not know YHL. But then, for the longest time I couldn't place FWIW.
But I actually mostly avoid abbreviations, even when I use the phrase itself because too many people don't know the specific meaning.
Which takes the sting out of 'Please, Eat Shit And Die.' [ESAD]
ash
['Also, when you spell it out they know you mean that and not in no cutesy way, neither.']
b, I'm on. ON. By which I mean, line.
Surely you mean Valium.
ash
['On Moonlight Bay.........']
OK, all the acronyms have really lost me... thanks for the list, ash! Certainly you mentioned a few others there that aren't on the list... care to enlighten? Indulge an acronymic n00b, if you will.
YHL = you have lost, in USENETty speak.
I have a real problem with people who lol at their own posts/emails. I would also like to suggest LLIGTJ as a response to witticisms (laughing like I get the joke).
FWIW == For What Its Worth
YMMV == Your Milage May Vary (I always spell this one out.)
BBS == Bulletin Board System
UUCP == Unix-to-Unix CoPy [cp is the name of the unix file copy command]
(Basically, back in the bad old days of the 80's, most people couldn't afford a permanent on connection (at 10,000$ a month or what have you), or even what we identify as a dial-up connection (for one thing, the protocol didn't exist). So, they had a scheme wherein a unix-based BBS could pass messages and files along to the REAL internet via a quick dial-connect-file transfer-disconnecting scheme. Eventually the message (or email) would hit a live connection and go out all over Usenet. There were other schemes that ran using a similar idea such as Fido. It might take a week for a message to arrive from somewhere like Siberia. A push USEnet connection will these days propogate the message in minutes, if not seconds. Of course, with the web, basically the message is propagated instantly, ignoring things like feeds.
The key difference is the always on versus not-always-on character of BBSes (usenet or inet email capable or not) versus Usenet. So, blogs function like BBSes in that there is no central blog backbone through which posts or comment propagate. The improvement is, of course, that everybody and his dog can pile on to a single site so things move much faster. Until the site goes down due to bandwidth overload.)
(Which is not to forget HTML versus ASCII (American Standard Character set II) or Ansi (from the name of the American National Standards Institute unless I am brain-farting) and other conventions. Bascially, technology has improved from the first time anyone ever set up a private message board (pre-Usenet!) back in 1978. Nonetheless the particular form of technology used affects the content in not always obvious ways.
Much like IM (Instant Messaging...too simple?) is essentially a warmed-over (or souped-up) version of IRC (Internet Relay Chat). The only distinction between the two is the exact method of character exchange. They are so close, frequently IM clients will also support IRC or say, a jabber (a protocal, not a TLA) server will translate to/from IRC.)
And more than you wanted to know about Usenet!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet
"Usenet is like a herd of performing elephants with diarrhea — massive, difficult to redirect, awe-inspiring, entertaining, and a source of mind-boggling amounts of excrement when you least expect it." — Gene Spafford
I think that covers all the ones I mentioned.
My favorite, of course, is IHNTSH,IJLS 'watchin' the buffy'. (I Have Nothing To Say Here, I Just Like Saying 'watchin' the buffy'.)
Also, and almost completely unrelated to TLAs, a nice trick, if you want to emphasize some kind of ironic comment by someone else to, is do this:
it took me one hour and 32 minutes to come up with that joke
IT TOOK ME ONE HOUR AND 32 MINUTES TO COME UP WITH THAT JOKE
ash
['Useless Habits, Volume XIII.']
And then, to waste even FURTHER amounts of your precious life, there's a very nice site that more or less sticks you right into that old BBS flavor.
http://www.textfiles.com/
Not that you really want to go there. Mostly we like them because they have ASCII [I got it wrong: American Standard Code for Information Interchange] naked pinups.
http://www.textfiles.com/art/ASCIIPR0N/
pinup25.txt
Less than obscene and more like moire art or something.
ash
['And if that isn't overkill, I don't know what is.']
[This is!]
Since nobody is hopefully reading this, here's some dude's story of his BBS, which basically covers it was like, sorta.
http://www.textfiles.com/history/lifeonledge.txt
ash
['This too shall pass away. Sniff.']
Hey, I always thought "j/k" meant "joke." Shows how ignorant I am. Probably no one will ever see this comment, but isn't "jack off" gender specific? Of course, "j/o" could mean "jilling off" (I learned that phrase from someone at Pandagon; I like "flicking the bean," too) if the writer is female.
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