INTERNET TIPS AND TRICKS VOL. 2

Note: This whole thing is about language and etymology on the internet. I promise you it's informative and relatively accurate. If you already know about a word, go ahead and skip it. This is a long one. I do realize there are probably a dozen websites that have all these words defined, most notably www.urbandicitionary.com but this is more tailored specifically to the basic words of the internet. I think you might enjoy it.



Language: It is the nature of language to branch and develop and change. It is this beautiful and oftimes confusing element of communication that can cause conflict and misunderstanding more than anything else humans encounter. I recently found a 1991 hacker's dictionary that made this glaringly obvious. Back before the World Wide Web, the only people who had internets were "hackers", who were essentially people who wrote their own ways to each other. These students of MIT and other tech schools, as well as random technophiles were communicating in a manner that only exists in subcultures. As people in a specific field of study, and work, they came up with their own dialect. As doctors speak to doctors or, more closely to me, sailors speak to sailors. "Chief, NIPR'S OOC. SKED's down, and PMS is gundecked." You understand that? If you missed one thing in that quote, you're not a sailor. Entiendes? It's English as it were, but not your English. Modern day internet is full of this. I won't go on for days comprehensively defining internetspeak; you have to learn your specific local lounges. I will list words/phrases/symbols that have become common amongst the internets, specifically in the most popular sites that get mentioned everyday in the ancient Medias, newspapers, TV, and radio.



1. Symbols of enjoyment:



Lol: laughing out loud; or simply, "ha" the minimalist method of expressing positive reaction even if you are nowhere near actually 'laughing out loud'.



Rofl: Rolling on floor laughing; or actually becoming somewhat happier from whatever the subject is.



Lmao: Laughing my ass off; also used harshly as sarcasm, or a lead into a "flame".



Lmfao: Laughing my fucking ass off; someone actually laughed. Yeah, it takes this much.



Ja (Ja): Ha; written primarily by people whose first language is Spanish or Portuguese, as in those languages the "j" is pronounced like the English "h". As far as I know, there is no "lol" equivalent in Spanish beyond the "ja ja".


Corrupted and possibly evil symbols of enjoyment:




Lolerskates: lol combined with roller skates. As if the laughing is continuing.



Lolercoaster: lol combined with rollercoaster, dueling meaning a group of funny things that vary in funny levels, up and down, or simply very funny.



Lulz: Pure evil. Anyone that uses this word likes excessive and exploitive pornography and/or is a racist, or is simply an idiot. The word itself implies a derived pleasure, that is usually through a means of said porn, racism, violence, or in the often media reported misery of other humans. Sadly this isn't a joke. :)



a. emoticons: all the symbols of "emotion"; although many different emotions can be expressed through 'emoticons', it is impossible to actually feel those emotions and use the emoticons. Anyone using emoticons isn't really anything but either happy, or slightly annoyed. Emoticons in practice are the very basic key entries, but many websites automatically force images to replace your text, (insanely enough, my own Microsoft Word has done such a thing) : ) happy : ( sad ;) wink etc. The Japanese have taken it to an art form. My old prepaid Japanese cell phone I bought in 2005 has more emoticons built-in than any 15 year old girl could possibly imagine.


2. Bad English: much of what is common on the internets is simply illiteracy. People who couldn't "speel" for the life of them and instead write what ignorant dumbshit symbolic representation of English makes them feel communicative.



a. Prolly: probably. Probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably, probably.



There you go. 85% of all the correctly spelled "probablys" on the entire web are just above this sentence.


3. Other words/symbols:


"/": e.g. /thread, /argument, /conversation, /sanity, /happiness; pronounced "end", a simplified form of a representation of actual html (see vol. 1). In html when you type ".. (quick note, I did type what I was saying would be html, so it actually acted as html and made what I typed invisible lol so I used parenthesis to break it up)

"(<)(/)" what follows is a command to end a previously written rule. When you want to frame the entire body of your subject, be it text, or images, you start with "(<)(a)(>)" (without quotes, and case is irrelevant) and you finish the "body" with "(<)(/)(a)(>)" (without quotes, blah blah). If someone writes "/thread" or "/argument" or "/discussion" they are saying in cordial internetspeak that the subject should, for politeness or rationality's sake, be discontinued.





Gtfo: Get the fuck out/off; a demand for a person to leave. It may be unwarranted, and is always ignored, therefore simply becomes an insult and a declaration that the person told to "gtfo" has less of a right to be wherever you are than the claimant.




Omg/ omfg: Oh my (fucking) god; this is like having an exclamation mark at the beginning of your sentence. Because English claims no use for such a symbolic warning, internet communicators were forced to come up with a "back door" method. Even though in person to person real life contact, English speakers use an exclamation before they speak in the form of facial expressions, hand gestures, and or vocal reactions like gasping. Whereas the superior (in this instance) language of Spanish, the sentence simply begins with an upside-down exclamation mark.



Noob/ newb/ noobie/ newbie: A person who is inexperienced; there are other definitions, but they are wrong. No one who actually tries to learn something will be a "noob" for very long. Thus many people become highly offended when they are compelled to spend any amount of time helping someone with issues that only a noob would incur. In the real world noobs can remain so despite effort for many months/years. On the internet, which functions for idiots and gets nothing done, to remain a newb makes you worthless.



IM: Instant Message; it's chat, but with one other person, and no "room". Also like email, but with no formality or memory. Also, most IMs let you know when someone you know is signed on. Myspace has an IM, but most people don't use it. I have one IM relationship with a dude named Brian; he's on my friend's list. He's a good guy, eh writes what he thinks and doesn't afraid of anything.



PM: Private Message; IM that people don't get around to much, as most "forums" have PM and most people don't check the forum daily. Also, PMs are always recorded, so like email that only people who sign up on a specific website can use. Myspace has a PM, though they call it "Message". I had a PM relationship with a 16 year old girl once, but she probably killed herself.



Forum: (aka bbs from back in the hacker days) a collection of "threads" on a website; usually possessing an overall theme; www.ronpaulforum.com is a forum that maintains a theme of Ron Paul, but each individual "thread" can encompass a different, or many different subjects. Often forums are categorized with multiple threads in each category, and sometimes each category is referred to as a separate forum, which is technically unimportant.



Thread: A line of commentary provided by one or more people; the "OP" (original poster) physically creates the thread which (usually) appears as its own web page. The only exception I have noted in the entire internet is www.collegehumor.com where each "reply" to a video is considered a separate thread, and each reply to a reply is considered "in thread response". It is considered an act of idiocy and noobishness if a person were to "reply" to the video instead of an "OP" while making a direct comment to a previous individual's reply. This is a special circumstance to the rest of the internet as all replies in all formats appear on the same page as the original video. A contrasted view of terminology is the similar formatted www.youtube.com where all replies are "comments" and there are no "threads". This has altered slightly as youtube has recently made it possible to 'directly' reply to someone's comment instead of the video itself, but has yet to correctly format their webpages or html to make this alteration obvious or comprehensible. In fact, youtube's formatting make conversation tedious and repetitive, making the aspect of "commenting" often times offensive and confusing, which in turn inspires the video 'posters' to disable the ability to comment on their video. Considering most people who comment on youtube videos are idiots to begin with, not much is questioned.

A good example is to see a video on youtube that features a somewhat attractive female, and 1,000 different men actually trying to "hit on" the video in the comment section. If they don't even realize it isn't a live webcam, and this is real life, not their fantasy land, then how can you expect them to understand formatting issues?



OP: Original poster; this person has set the mood for a discussion. Anyone intending to stay on topic will refer to the OP and comment on the OP's subject. Most internet conversations actually stay more on topic than real life conversations. There is no such thing as an "OP" in real life. If someone starts a conversation, or makes a statement in real life, it may inspire others to speak as well, but no one will appreciate the original subject or subject starter within minutes (unless of course the real life OP continues to manipulate the conversation, much as a teacher, or inquisitive person would).



Troll: douchebag; someone who acts with intention to evoke an emotional (usually negative) response from others. A troll may accomplish their goal in many ways, but their purpose is consistent, they do not respect other people, and wouldn't even be allowed near other people in real life. A troll would go to a Christian forum, and start a thread calling Jesus a fag. They may or may not believe in Jesus, and this is moot. They only seek to hurt/anger others. Usually trolls make their trolling statements, and never return. If they do return, it's only to fan the flames. Trolls never provide actual reasoning, nor employ any logic; they will only write what is necessary to achieve said emotional disruption. Sometimes trolls are discovered or are too obvious and no one takes the bait, but more often troll arguments are more successful in starting long meaningful passionate debates than concise, logical statements. This is primarily due to the internet appealing to morons.



Flames/flaming: Arguments/arguing devoid of reason and based primarily on emotion; In real life a "flamer" likes butt sex. On the internet, a flamer is one who 'ignites' other's emotion's specifically through insults. While a flamer can be a troll, and a troll can be a flamer, flaming tends to be "micro" and trolling tends to be "macro". Flaming, or flame warring is a series of insults hurled between 2 or more people over a thread or sometimes an entire forum. Most websites discourage this, and delete the comments and threaten the flamers with banning.

Meme: Cultural gene; the word applies to anything that passes as cultural "knowledge". The idiots of the internet would kill kittens to prove that meme has another definition; "pictures and phrases that are spread throughout the internet". This of course is still the original definition of meme. Though the kind of memes originally thought up were on a grander, more affecting scale, they are all memes. Common memes of a much more ancient manner are idioms. "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink" "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" "That's like the pot calling the kettle black" these idioms are obviously old. Most people have never even touched a horse, and if they had they certainly didn't get to lead it anywhere. Most people don't catch birds; most people don't have any idea why a pot would be worried about being black. But they know what the phrase means, the phrase conjures a concept within them, effectively communicating uses a means other than direct, pertinent language. With the internet, new memes can be passed, rather quickly. The "I can has cheezburger?" meme is legendary, and it spawned entire websites devoted to image concepts based on that one picture. Even after that cat has passed, he has lived on as a cultural gene, a meme.


4. leet (1337) : Leet is a derivative of 'elite'. It in itself is a term used for "hackers" but pretty much isn't properly used. Every computer nerd with some script writing wishes he were a hacker. In fact, this has always been the case, when I was reading the hacker's dictionary; they mentioned that most hackers wished they were more than they actually were. They wanted notoriety. In a system (the old internets) that required actual skill to be able to work/communicate/jest and had many varying levels of difficulty, it became logical that one would want to be known by many. People had to study, and work hard to communicate and use the internets. They were all hackers. No one fed them anything. Since getting in required skills, communicating required skills, it created an environment of people fighting to be the first to do something, or make something. This is why the computer/internet age advanced so quickly. These people wanted internet communication to be on par with real life communication.


In the new generation, there is no such thing as a "good" hacker. No need to innovate, no need to conquer, using the old ways. So there is little incentive to becoming a hacker. We are spoon fed the spoils of the previous generation. In this easy going world, the new concept of hacker became fruitful. Basically, being a douchebag and knowing some binary now makes you a hacker or "haxx0r", in leet.


Hackers take credit for everything. They claim to have reorganized the very foundations of written and spoken English, long before the world wide web. And they possessed so many internal words that they consider it their own language (mostly because they're self absorbed and intellectually lacking in anything beyond electronics, for instance Cultural Anthropology). Modern day wannabe haxx0rs have made up their own language too. But it is so far removed from old hacker language as to be only a long running joke on the internet.


Leet is the language of derivative ignorance. Its simplistic reformation of English serves no purpose save a self claimed superiority and method of higher communication. Leet essentially breaks down to replacing normal English letters with symbols.



Examples: a= 4, b= 8, c= x , o = 0 There really are no rules, and anything normal people start doing on the internet, leet users will adopt to further it's self-defeatist cause. 1337 or l33t = leet, haxx0r = hacker. There are many more and I don't care.



Something to note is that because the old hacker language was so culturally specific, it died. And because leet is so meaningless, it often attains new meaning as it is adopted into common usage. The TV show numb3rs uses the leet letter for 'e', I have never seen the show, but if there are sexy model/nerds and computers involved I wouldn't be surprised.


My absolute favorite is one instance of leet corruption. "pwn" or "pw3d" is leet for "own" and "owned". To be "owned" in internet speak is to have something overcome you in a ridiculous manner. For example when I try to write out blogs on Myspace, I am frequently owned by the shitty "post" function that auto deletes everything I write, if it's particularly long. The corruption is this; most people don't know or care about leet, so when they started seeing "pwn3d" and "pwn" everywhere in some of the first common "memes" on the interwebz, they automatically assumed that the "p" is pronounced like an English "p". This is of course a complete re-corruption. Leet took "p" and used it for an "o" because it still has the circle in it, and that's the essence of leet. People who didn't know pr0n from prawn assumed they should pronounce the p as a p, and THUS ENGLISH RETOOK A LEET WORD. OMFGROFLOLERCOASTER! So everyone that said "powned" out loud is an idiot. But if enough people say it, the rules change. I could say in this instance, leet got owned by its own idiotic language.