Language is constantly evolving, but I know I am getting old when I read some of the terms being thrown around in social media and have no clue what they mean, and the first one that stands out is GOAT. I was floored when athletes at the Paris Olympics were being referred to as GOATs, and I thought to myself this was terribly disrespectful. The reporters kept saying “from one GOAT to another” and I was lost. The clue should have been in the use of all capitals, but it took me a few minutes to realise this and then I consulted dear old Google to see what it had to say. As it turns out, GOAT has absolutely nothing to do with a four-legged creature that eats anything in its way, but is an acronym that stands for Greatest Of All Time.
I dug deeper to make some sense of all the lingo being thrown around that is driving me nuts at the moment, and here’s a token of what I found:
- AMA: Ask me anything
- RT or Rt: Retweet
- AFAIK: As far as I know
- DAE: Does anyone else
- FOMO: Fear of missing out
- GMTA: Great minds think alike
- HTH: Happy to help
- IANAD: I am not a doctor
- ICYMI: In case you missed it
- SoLoMo: Social, Local, Mobile
- TIME: Tears in my eyes
- WDYMBT: What do you mean by that
- YSK: You should know
click HERE for a more comprehensive list in English, HERE for a list in German, and HERE for a list in Spanish.
After reading the English list suddenly a lot of things fell into place and began to make sense. But I have to ask, whatever happened to the days of writing and communicating in complete sentences? Why have we come full circle and replaced Morse code with these acronyms that mess with linguistics even on the best of days? I mean, when I see the word TIME I think of the magazine and it doesn’t register in my brain that it might stand for something completely different.
If I get instructions to publish something SoLoMo my first instinct is to assume that I am looking for something or someone called Solomon who has a press or is a publisher. My generation doesn’t think of social media campaigns that will be launched SoLoMo.
My ultimate nightmare would be to receive a message that is just a bunch of acronyms strung together. That would be the absolute demise of civilised communication as we know it. I don’t think I would even bother to decipher such a message, let alone reply to it. In any case, I recommend you go through the list of terms on the website I have linked above. Even if you never use the acronyms, it will make for entertaining reading and you will be one step closer to understanding some of the captions on social media.
Related entry: Internet Linguistics
Today’s blog entry on The Esoteric Frog:
FrogDiva Thoughts 