I’ve been thinking for ages that I should create a new blog post, not that anyone reads this, but I live in hope that one day they might and so some actual content will be useful.
But every time I think I’d like to sit and write something, I realise I have nothing to say. At least nothing outrageously hilarious to say, and I feel that anecdotal blogs need to be real knee-slappers to keep people entertained or my posts will be relegated to the “tl:dr” pile, which some of you will know means “Too long; didn’t read” in internet language.
Being a self-professed (and universally loathed) grammar nazi, and also an actual adult, it has taken me a long time to get used to all these abbreviations that have been plastered all over the internet and in text messages.
I used to be of the belief, and I know I’m not alone here that “lol” meant “lots of love” and so sent many a message to friends that were probably wildly inappropriate.
The thing that bugs me about “lol”, or the more exaggerated “rofl” (Rolling On Floor Laughing) is that more often than not, it is a COMPLETE AND TOTAL LIE!
Back in the old days, say 2007 or so, when msn messenger was popular (at least for me) and people used to send me a “lol” or a “rofl”, my response was always the same: Really? Are you REALLY rolling on the floor laughing? Are you really laughing out loud.
To that end, I coined my own, much more plausible response when someone sent me something mildly humorous. It was “cq”.
Cq, if you haven’t already guessed, stands for chuckling quietly.
“Oh the funniest thing just happened. I saw a cat get run over”
“cq”
“huh?”
“chuckling quietly”
“don’t you think it’s funny?”
“I think it’s HILARIOUS, you know how much I love a good dead cat story, but
I don’t like to lie about my reactions, so I’m cq”
“oh….so….you’re just…..I have to go now”
And they would promptly run off and regale their other online friends with their hilarious tale of squished cat bits all over the road, to which everyone undoubtedly replied “OMFG ROFL WWYH TTYL!!!” thus validating the storyteller.
I had hoped that cq would catch on with the same fervour as lol and that I would become the celebrated and heavily financially compensated hero of the internet. Sadly, it did not catch on at all and to this day I am still grateful to my internet pal, Leonie Mitaxa, who at least it tried to use it in textual intercourse.
The other thing that bugs me about lol or the more exuberant rofl, is the insincerity of it.
I’ve discovered recently that you can say anything you like to somebody, but as long as you put those three (or four if you’re really trying to drive the point home) little letters on the end, then you can pretty much get away with anything!
Case in point, if I send one of my rather large and more intimidating friends the following text: “You’re such a big fairy and your mother is a tramp,” then I can reasonably expect to be physically hurt, or at the very least, verbally admonished and stricken from the Christmas card list before the end of an illegal download has gone by.
However, if I slightly rephrase the statement to: “You’re such a big fairy, lol, and your mother is a tramp. Hehe,” then I rather imagine even the largest of my no-necked friends would at the very least find themselves cq and will undoubtedly reply with “Rofl. You’re such a card”.
So am I alone in this? Is anyone else as perplexed and as outraged as I am about the blatant lack of actual words in common usage on the internet?
Soon I will post a new blog with how many of these abbreviations I have misunderstood and then humiliated myself by either using them incorrectly with hilarious consequences, or by telling others what they mean only to discover I have been spreading horrendous LIES
TTFN.
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