I was checking out the World of Warcraft Forum for Absolute Beginners, Welcome to WoW, because noobs are always chuckle-worthy. There’s a sticky post of WoW Lingo translations — you’ll know all of those — but I noticed that the most famous internet acronym of all isn’t included.
You know the one … W T F.
A gaming nubling would see WTF about 23,904 times per gaming session, they NEED to know what we’re screaming at them!
And that reminded me of a real life story.
Some family holiday, maybe was Thanksgiving, dunno, but my extended family was in full force … brother, sister, their spouses, children, their in-laws and their children … and we get to talking about the venacular of txt messaging and the internet. My sibling’s sister-in-law asked what “p-own” means. (Actually, “pwn”, but she had only heard it, never seen it in print.)
My nephew (level 62 druid on another server because I don’t want him witnessing any Uncle Foton hate in the general chat channels) and I started laughing and explained what pwning is and how much we, personally, pwn. We would have further explained how much we’d pwn her if she ever dared step inside Warcraft, but she asked about other acronyms and we answered. (Don’t worry, we didn’t give away all the internet secrets.)
Let me briefly pause to explain that this woman has been a thorn in my side since the day I met her. I barely acknowledge her existence, and she mine, ever since a family tussle that we now refer to as “That First Communion Incident”. Now, I never miss an opportunity to passive-aggressively torment her. And it’s remarkably easy to do.
Anyways, she started going on about gaming and how borderline satanic, evil it is (y’know, blow me) with its speaking in tongues and all, and then she fake apologized for asking all those questions.
“No prob”, said me, “as long as you don’t ask what W T F is.”
My nephew snorted soda out of his nose.
“W T F?” asked she. (Didn’t I just tell her not to ask?)
I leaned in conspiratorially, “What. The. Fuck.” and took my leave.
Asked and answered, baby, asked and answered.
I can hardly wait ’til she asks about “mofo”.
You win. =D
Serious pwnage! You are my new hero.
Foton for president!
*giggles until blue in the face*
Go Uncle Foton!
I’d be curious how many guilds have their own internetese. I know in my guild a former guildie came up with a gem I use all the time now.
DIAPS
Die in a Prison Shower.
(no offense meant to anyone who has suffered that tragic fate, but it’s a great thing to you yell after you cap a flag or get an amazing crit and 2 shot someone in PVP.)
I find myself in the same position. Whenever I go back home for an extended family gathering, my 2 brothers and I end up talking about gaming, which means internetese creeps in of course. The confused looks from my fundamental christian relatives (read: the most boring and judgemental people you will ever meet in your life) is the one thing I really look forward to.
And this year I will be talking about my new Pally, that class has all sorts of acronyms.
I had the distinct pleasure of explaining to some deeply earnest outsourcers (for whom English was a second (or third) language) that “FTW” meant “for the win” and not “fuck the world”. They were extrapolating from “WTF”, of course.
Oh you didn’t introduce her to “STFUB”?
My personal favs have always been PITA, and a couple carry overs from my military days SNAFU, and FUBAR (which are great ones for those raids were you just can’t seem to do a single damn thing right).
A serious salute to you my friend, you pwn the crap out of RL.
RAWK ON!!
SNAFU and FUBAR FTW, TBH…IMO.
You pwn some major RL ass my friend! /salute
One thing I have noticed is that among gamers, even of console sort, there is a bit of shared language. I guess we can thank things like XBL for that. But still, WoW tends to also have it’s own dialect. 🙂
The one I use for the PvP battlegrounds…or did, pre-BC post 2.0 patch when we actually played them…was BOHICA.
Bend Over Here It Comes Again.
Just shout it out at the beginning of the match. Someone is bound to ask what it means, and the chuckles are usually pretty decent at releasing some of the tension.