One of the things I like about the net is the jargon, lexicon, web speak, etc.
One of the most prevalent parts of web speak is the contraction of entire sentences into letters.
The most well know of these is the ubiquitous Laugh Out Loud being contracted into lol.
For the most part, these are harmless little idiosyncrasies of daily life:
lol, rotf, ttfn, FTW, YTMND and the one that helps at work: NSFW. There are many more.
However, among these are the ones that tend to stick in my mind more readily. The ones that are not so harmless.
I remember when I was a kid. (Well, part of me still is!) I used to cuss. A lot.
No, you don't understand. A LOT!
I can still remember walking across the street with my buddy, Brian. We were heading to the Zebra Den arcade to blow some hard earned quarters, and just talking, and in them middle of the street he stopped me and told me that I swore too much. I was a bit taken aback. HE SWORE TOO! But apparently, I was over the top.
I'm pretty sure I learned it from my older brother, who, as the cliche's have it, was a sailor!
But I digress.
Among the net speak initials that get stuck in my head, are the ones that include curse words:
memes like: LMAO, RTFM (a fav), the ever popular STFU, the one the pops into my mind the most: WTF?!?! and the newest one I've read, RFN.
Don't look them up if you don't know them already!
Anyway, when I started hanging out with the girl who would eventually become the love of my life and finally would become my wife, I naturally didn't swear...I didn't even have to try to not swear. Something inside of me knew I shouldn't do it.
As I grew older, started going to church, working with Utes and having children, I had ever more reasons to not swear.
However, I do find my self, more often than I care to admit, repeating these in my mind when the situation arises:
"Matthew! I need that
"Yes sir, I think I sent you that info in an email"
"So you deleted everything in your email sir?"
"That dude SO cute me off!"
And so on and so on.
I've been around cursing all my life. My folks swear, many of my friends swear. Cursing is like Santa Clause...it's everywhere! For the most part, I think I've been inoculated from this bane of original thought and expression.
However, I do have to constantly ward off the urge to use the 'net spoken abbreviations.
