Maybe it’s my slightly over-abundant valley girl side that attracts me to unrealistic guilty pleasure movies like Clueless or Bring it On: All or Nothing! It could even be that “inner child“ everyone keeps talking about. Regardless, one of those forces me to grab my Sour Patch Kids, pop in the DVD, and commence the teen-fest. It’s the nerd in me that latches onto the lingo though. Yes, lingo! Verbiage! These movies have one major thing in common with my Tribble loving nerd self; they are Acronym Loquacious.
OMG, IKR, LOL and more are all everyday shortenings of words that were, once upon a time, spelled out in black and white. Now, the teenagers like my daughter, use them for announcing there is a parent over the shoulder (POS), or completely removing the word “you” from their senior level vocabulary. I like to think that I am better, in as much as I can articulate myself if I need to. My Facebook, such as it is, is not covered with IDK, AFAIK, or SMH. That’s when I pause to double check myself and look at my old lady crochet group to see WIP (work in progress), and at my WoW (World of Warcraft) account with its RNG (random number generator). Are we, the second and third generation gamers and nerds, responsible for the acronyms our children use now? Is this new class of life carrying on a tradition we ourselves created and allowed them to corrupt? The answer is yes.
We, the people of technology, started long ago in various fields to create our jargon. A way to separate ourselves, and cut time of explanation down to a minimum started way back before the military had its S.O.S. and BCG’s (birth control glasses). Matriculated and morphed from era to era, acronyms cover everything from SWTOR (Star Wars: The Old Republic) to NASA’s RTC (real time command). I admit to frustration building when I see, “u ok?” I find it lazy and incredibly lacking of English language rules. The simple question is; am I really so different when it comes right down to it? Are any of us? So while Britney Allen of Bring It On: All or Nothing! asks, “You speak IM?!” the answer is “No. They speak me.”