Why have we become so driven by acronyms? Everything we talk about, we see, we use, places we go to needs to have a shorter name. It is sort of like giving a nickname, only it really is not so.
If you are not part of the acronym churning crowd you are not “in”. You must Lol and not laugh out loud. When we have a chat window open at work, and suddenly there is some high priority work which needs to get completed we inform our friends that we’ll “brb” and not be right back or better still they would say “ttyl” which is short for talk to you later. I must confess the first time I got that reply I was stumped! I had no clue what that meant. When I asked my friend he was aghast at my lack of knowledge.
This immense shortening of expressions is not only restricted to informal modes of communication. It has percolated into formal modes of communication too. In an extremely formal letter sent via e-mail you find “KFA” or “FYI” which are actually respective acronyms for “Kindly find attached” and “For your Information”.
We swear by the ATM, it is our life line; but very few of us really know that ATM is not Any Time Money or All Time Money but it actually is Automatic Teller Machine.
When you are out in a fab (which itself is a shorter version of fabulous) place hanging you do not check out nice looking people but you indulge in “NSP” which is nayan sukh prapti (Hindi for feasting your eyes). Things are LS (low standard) and btw (by the way) we are SC (super cool). Then of course there is "toldja" (told you) and "wassup" (what's up, which itself is pretty short!)
Hanging out with friends reminds me of this conversation I was having with a friend the other day. We had not met in a long time so she wanted to meet up. I asked her to suggest a place and she said” why don’t we meet at SCM?” Now my knowledge leads me to believe that SCM is Supply Chain Management which is a very painful paper and I would rather not get back to it. So I looked at her with a bewildered-this-totally-beats-me expression and she rolls her eyes to inform me that she meant “South City Mall”! Seriously?
Why do we have to make LSD( life so difficult ) ?
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ReplyDeleteYou git!
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Yep acronyms are annoying. I find it often when I start a new job that they'll all presume that everyone else knows what things like PDS or MCS mean. Something that I find even more annoying is when people use text-message style shortening of words in emails or on the internet. I just refuse to read it.
ReplyDeleteI guess acronyms are useful sometimes as long as everyone knows what they mean. But things like lol don't make sense to me as I doubt people are actually laughing out loud when they actually type it!
LSD. Yay. (Yes! Ah, Yes!)
ReplyDeletebtw gr8 post... :P
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