Name: Confusing text abbreviations.
Age: As old as texts themselves.
Appearance: SYBAU.
I don’t know what that means. I’ll help. It means “shut your bitch ass up”.
Heavens above, my teenager sent that to me this morning! Well, in that case I hope you managed to do as instructed.
I thought it meant “stay young, beautiful and unique”. It sounds as if you’re one of an increasing number of grownups who have turned to Google to try to decode the text abbreviations used by the youth of today.
For the purposes of this article, let’s say yes. Good, because research by the anagram website Unscramblerer.com has revealed the most confusing examples.
Great! Please help me. Wonderful. So, do you know what WYLL stands for?
“Would you levitate lightly?” No, it means “what you look like”. What about PMO?
No idea. It either means “put me on” or “pisses me off”.
Yes, but which one? Having an abbreviation that means two different things defeats the purpose of an abbreviation. Wow, your snark really PMO.
What else is on the list? Well, there’s WFH and TBH.
Work from home and to be honest? Huh, you got those right. Are you secretly a teenager?
No, I’m just an adult who has happened to use the internet more than once over the last 20 years. But this is a list about young people.
Do teenagers text each other about working from home a lot? OK, last one: ASL.
Oh please, I’m not ancient. It’s “age, sex, location”. No, apparently the research suggests that the answer is in fact “as hell”.
I’m pretty sure it’s “age, sex, location”. There’s a Wikipedia page about it and everything. But the list cannot be wrong. Parents rely on this sort of thing to make sure their children aren’t out buying drugs on WhatsApp or whatever.
I don’t know what to say. The list also states that OTP stands for “One true pairing”. That has to be right, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?
It might also mean “on the phone”. Oh yeah, I suppose it would make far more sense to have an abbreviation to let people know that you can’t send a longer message because you’re currently on a call.
Could it be the case that text abbreviations have become such an entrenched cultural norm that their use has now ossified, meaning parents no longer have to fear the worst about what their children are communicating? SYBAU.
I will stay young, beautiful and unique. Thank you. LOL (which I shall assume stands for “livid, obviously livid”).
Do say: “I’ve got FOMO about confusing abbreviations.”
Don’t say: “FOMO stands for ‘Feral Outburst Mode: On’.”
