S.A. (Stupid Abbreviations)

A few weeks back, I was reading an article about teenagers’ problems. Drinking, smoking, PMS, the works. To my horror, I realised I am not a teenager anymore..It took sometime to register. And a few days back, I got another rude reminder. I was reading some guy’s blogs. You know, the usual “Yo, man!! ‘ssup, dude” kinds. To my disbelief, I could not understand half of what he meant.

Not that I have been great with abbreviated net lingo. The first time I tried chatting, (I was in 8th standard.we guys had jumped the compound of our spiritual boarding school,but that’s another story !!). So, I was trying to “chat” for the first time. Someone asked me “ASL ?” Infuriated,I replied saying “YOU are an asshole !” To my astonishment, everybody I met after that seemed to be asking the same question !!

I used to have such a tough time. I mean, if you were put in an ‘all-boys’ boarding school for 10 years, you to get a little desperate. So I was always in pursuit of some amazing chick that I hoped to meet online. I would keep saying “Hi ! How are you ?” to every girl in the chat room. No one replied, of course. But there are these irritating morons who get a kick out of pissing people off. So, finally I meet this girl and am having “hot chat” (whatever that means) with her. Ridiculous stuff, like me saying “Oh ..you are truly beautiful” and the girl saying “oooh baby,I want you baby” and all that. And then, she decided to turn on her webcam.

I am licking my lips in anticipation, only to discover that its a fat, hairy, loser of a guy and then he says “HAHAHA Gotcha !!”

Coming back to the topic, when it comes to lingo, I belong to the old school. I spell each word as Shakespeare himself spelt them. And today’s kids converse something like this:

hru. ssup? rarly ol des dez?

m hvin xams,mah lys skrwd.

I mean,what are you supposed to understand from that? Kindly explain how “mah” is a ‘short form’ for “my”. My reading speed drops down to half when I have to read this stuff. I feel old, as I literally have to say the words aloud.

“MAH”.

Hmmm…okay,what does he me mean?

Ma? mother ? NO. Maharashtra ? No.Ok,my life”.

Its that bad !!

And to top it all off they have short forms. JLT means “just like that”. OL means online. NOIDA means no idea. How do you remember all the codes ? Then there are the wierd ones. You would be forgiven to think that LOHAK is a distant cousin of “mohawk”, but it means “Lots of hugs and kisses” How generous !! If only you were so with your words too !! ROTFLMAO is something I have never been able to find the meaning of.Not as if I haven’t tried,I have made my guesses. All I could come up with was “Run Or The Fucking Loser May Ask u Out”. But why would a guy tell me that ?

Its scary to think that may be after a few decades, such codes would be the norm. And people would even read that way. It would be confusing,trust me. For eg.,if an employee sends a report to his boss FYI (for your information) ,whats the guarantee that the boss wont think that he’s actually telling him “Fuck you,Idiot ” ??

We would all be old and obsolete. If a kid wished us “GM” for Good morning,we would always be in doubt if he was actually saying “Geriatric Moron “. So save us all from that day. Ensure that the “yo” generation doesn’t get to us. Kindly avoid using short forms unless very necessary.

Chalo,GTG,GNSD,TC !!!!!