Acronyms
 

There are so many of them and recently I've been seeing some new ones. Do you hate it when people use obscure acronyms? Imo, they make the message confusing and htr.

World of Warcraft is probably the best example of acronyms. When I played the game back in the day, half of getting started was learning what all of those acronyms meant. Even FTW required a Google search.

What acronyms do you use? What do you think of them in online speech?

Laser is an acronym? I really hate most internet acronyms, especially ones used seemingly at random. It can also become confusing when describing something that has a similar acronym, like talking about Mortal Kombat or Mario Kart. Some people will create an acronym out of them, and it could be hard to know what they're talking about unless you use context.

I like using btw for by the way all the time at the start of some convo msgs.
I think lol is the most obvious example, although it more of an emotion, rather than a stand in for "laughing out loud" (eg. "That's nice, <laughing out loud> (!).)
ASAP for as soon as possible has fallen into my favour.

That's pretty much it since everything else falls under shortenings instead of acronyms, pretty much.
(Htr, how silly!)

I like to use the usual internet acronyms as long as they are easy to understand and I will sometimes use short-hand (b/c, w/o, etc.). As long as the majority of the sentence isn't acronyms, I'm fine with it. I just can't stand it when people use acronyms to create long, whole sentences because it becomes confusing and the range of internet speak is different among individuals.

most of them aren't acronyms; they're initialisms.

"lol" would only be an acronym if you say "lawl" rather than "L-O-L".

People do. Hence "lawl" itself has become a minor meme, replacing "lol" in some cases. It's based on the pronunciation. You may not, but that doesn't mean that everyone does not.

bobo played World of Warcraft back in the day? I guess he was too cool to join our GFF guild. ;_;

I don't really use them too often. It's not really that hard to type out your sentences completely, especially in an online game where you just click the eneny to fight. When I see it used on the forums I sometimes get this huge urge to edit the post and spell out the words completely.

Haha, pllaying just about any MMO (massive multiplayer, another acronym hehe) game today, you pretty much need to learn some of them if you're not already used to them, especially WoW (World of Warcraft, sometimes abbreviated WOW) (it's more annoying when someone sends you a tell in chinese, usually asking for food/water, or trying to send you a tell about a gold selling site). The bad thing about asking peeps about what they stand for is, you'll sometimes get some crap for it, but oftentimes it's repeated enough that you'll start learning a lot of them after a while.

Heck, I remember when I first started out, I had no friggin clue what BWL, UBRS, LBRS, BRD, UD/Live Strat, Scholo, ST, SM, MC, AQ, ZF, or ZG meant. But after playing the game for a while, I slowly began to realize those are the acronyms for dungeons in WoW (mostly high lvl ones).

The problem I see mostly is when words begin to use the same acronyms. For instance, in WoW, DM could stand for either Deadmines, or Dire Maul. When I first started out, (on a new server) DM pretty much meant the low level dungeon, but increasingly, peeps have been referring to Deadmines as "VC", for Van Cleef, the boss of that dungeon. The reason why is DM = Dire Maul to many peeps in the game, and Dire Maul is a high level dungeon, so when peeps get higher lvls, they don't want to say "LFG for DM" (Looking for group), and mean deadmines (if they're referring to the low dungeon, then they say "LFG for VC").

Another thing that's interesting, although slightly off-topic, is words, phrases, or names that are relevant and familiar to some people, but to others just totally makes no sense. For instance, in Dark Age of Camelot (DAOC) I used to hear "Leeroy Jenkins!" a lot, usually right before we attacked something en masse (like storming a keep/tower). Since I hadn't played World of Warcraft at that point, I had no idea what that meant. After doing some online research, I finally understood what shouting that name meant (not to mention the semi-hiliarious video it was in).

Back when I first got on the Internet, I went along with the crowd and learned most of the acronyms. Now that I've been around for awhile, acronyms are annoying. Like "lol"....why not just "hahaha" or even "ha"? While acronyms are necessary for long titles and stuff, using them just because is annoying. I especially can't stand people that use them in every other word. :(

Acronyms are my bane. Sure, I know the common internet ones, and plenty along the lines of gaming and such. But if someone says an acronym out of nowhere, there is -no- way in hell I'll figure it out. Personally, I don't like using them very much, just like Miyomi said, silly old 'lol' can be replaced with a nice 'Heh' or 'Haha', 'cause you know, those are sounds real people make, for (about) the same amount of letters!

Gawd I hate "lol", because if it really means laughing out loud then that's what you should be doing when you type it. But the frequency which it gets used means that people are usually not laughing out loud, which i think means they should not type that they are. Type like a "hehehehe" or "that was a good one" or something.

…what is an acronym, and how does it differ from an initialism, in your opinion?

Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

I guess I'm not the only one who hates LOL, prefering haha and hehe instead. I do use BRB and OMG (thanks to a friend), but other than that, I generally don't use them. I don't mind it when other people use them though.

Shortening words (eg 'u' instead of 'you) is more annoying to me, in my opinion :(

I think he tried to explain it...however, an acronym tends to make up a new "pronouncable" word (NASA, radar, laser, WAC--to name a few).

And since LOL has become "lawl," it has graduated to a higher plane of existance.

As for Mortal Kombat and Mario Kart both using MK....Those are their initials. And you are just pronouncing those letters, so I wouldn't call them acronyms at all. However, calling one "MORK" and the other "MARK" would be using acronyms.

Spot on, Leknaat.

Initialism // Acronym

Acrnoym = An initialism that is also a usable word. Radar, laser, etc.
Initialism = An abbreviation consisting of the initial letters, often pronounced separately. CPU, BGP, RIP, etc.

I would say that lol is now an acronym; it gets treated like any other word: I lol'ed. I'm lol'ing at you. Lets go lol at this fucker.

EDIT: The only real time I use acronyms/initialisms is when they apply to the subject that I am talking about. Often times, this involves heavy geek talk so all kinds of network or tech related jargon gets tossed back and forth, much of it unintelligable to normal people.

uh, nice point. I will try to use more "hahaha" instead of "lol" here.
:lolsign:

I use only the general acronym such as btw, lol, ASAP, LMAO. I try not to use other than that too much since they I consider them impolite. I especially hate it when people just use "thx" in the end of their message.

I use lol, btw, ttyl and a bunch other, but I find it hilarious when people use them in real life.

The only thing I hate is when people use acronyms for names that are long and obscure.

For example a friend of mine and I were talking about banks and he said he used to belong to the WMCCU like I am supposed to know what that means. Later I found out it was the credit union in our county.

I remember being new to Initialism/Acronyms over the internet, thinking lmao was a misspelling for lame-o. Generally, I usually don't use them unless they are so unique that people I talk to know exactly what I am talking about. For instance, when I say OST, people who are in to OSTs will know what I am talking about, and people who do not know what OSTs are will not easily confuse it for a different meaning.

The people I hate the most are the people who say the abbreviations out loud. I remember being on stagecrew, when I actually heard someone say "el owe el" over headset. Everyone on heads cursed him out for that.

I don't use many acronyms, just simple Internet ones (lol, IM, gtg... that kind of thing). I'm naturally compelled to type things as I would say them, at least in regards to conversing with someone online, which is why I use so few. The ones I do use are either to inconvenient to type out or just sound silly when fully typed. It would seem odd if someone typed "laugh out loud" instead of "lol."

I don't like it when people use Internet acronyms I don't know. It's not their fault because they don't know that I don't know them, but if they would just talk normal, that problem would never arise.

I use an "Acro-nym" every day.

Aren't Radar and Sonar acronyms too, on a related note? The military loves their acronyms.

Radar - Radio and Ranging.
Sonar - Sound Navigation and Ranging

Yeah, it took me a while to get used to internet colloquialisms. Like AFAIK, FYI, FTW, BTW. For the longest time I didn't know what rofl, lol, lmao meant either. I just kind of used it in the same situations which I watched them being used. Also I always thought albeit was a net acronym, but... it's actually a common colloquialism in the UK, I think?