Friday, June 27, 2008
LOL's and the DMV
A friend of a friend of a friend is in the Missouri National Guard, and was having a hard time deciphering an acronym that showed up in an e-mail. He scoured the manuals trying to figure out what this new acronym "ROFL" might stand for until someone kindly clued him in:
"Rolling On the Floor Laughing"
Not so much a military term, just another product of the instant message culture. And ROFL is just the tip of the iceberg--whole sub-dialects of English have emerged, ushered into existence by text and instant messaging and the need to save time/characters by abbreviating common phrases. New "words" emerge regularly--indeed, half the fun seems to be in guessing what some of the new acronyms might mean, and sometimes they can get a little bawdy. The letter "F" shows up quite often, but unlike the above example, it typically doesn't stand for "Floor".
This is proving to be problematic for the DMV, who try to avoid issuing plates that say rude or potentially offensive things. It seems the North Carolina DMV issued several plates that began with WTF (a very popular acronym, not at all new, standing for "What", "the", and... use your imagination) before someone's teenager let them in on the joke.
Of course the real problem for the DMV is that the language of text messages is ever-evolving. Something innocuous today might turn out to be horribly obscene in two years. And it's not enough to know what things mean, you have to also keep track of how popular they are, because it should be no surprise that an overwhelming number of 3-4 letter combinations are acronyms for something, often for several things.
For example, NASA, which we know as the "National Aeronautics and Space Administration", also stands for "National Auto Sport Association" and "North American Saxophone Alliance", and Space-NASA has been ubiquitous for decades. What about the wealth of acronyms that serve as short-hand for, I dunno, skinheads or call-girls? Most people wouldn't recognize those acronyms, but some people would, and they can be truly, deeply offensive. It's not a huge feat to imagine that these might slip through and be issued (accidentally or otherwise), and it's not much more of a leap to think that maybe a few already have.
Part of me wants to believe that anyone old enough to drive a vehicle is old enough to behave sensibly and maturely about the accidental possibility of unintended and obli1que references to obscenity. But it doesn't last long.
So the DMV is probably going to have to let things slide and learn responses like "you didn't think WTF was offensive when we issued you the plate". In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if we got another form to fill out that shifts liability from the issuer to the issue-ee, something to the effect of "My name is John McCain and I approve this license plate."
Either that, or we're going to start seeing more license plates with their characters seated letter-number-letter-number-letter-number.
FoxTrax GPS Fleet Tracking
Clever solutions for vehicle tracking
www.FoxTraxGPS.com
"Rolling On the Floor Laughing"
Not so much a military term, just another product of the instant message culture. And ROFL is just the tip of the iceberg--whole sub-dialects of English have emerged, ushered into existence by text and instant messaging and the need to save time/characters by abbreviating common phrases. New "words" emerge regularly--indeed, half the fun seems to be in guessing what some of the new acronyms might mean, and sometimes they can get a little bawdy. The letter "F" shows up quite often, but unlike the above example, it typically doesn't stand for "Floor".
This is proving to be problematic for the DMV, who try to avoid issuing plates that say rude or potentially offensive things. It seems the North Carolina DMV issued several plates that began with WTF (a very popular acronym, not at all new, standing for "What", "the", and... use your imagination) before someone's teenager let them in on the joke.
Of course the real problem for the DMV is that the language of text messages is ever-evolving. Something innocuous today might turn out to be horribly obscene in two years. And it's not enough to know what things mean, you have to also keep track of how popular they are, because it should be no surprise that an overwhelming number of 3-4 letter combinations are acronyms for something, often for several things.
For example, NASA, which we know as the "National Aeronautics and Space Administration", also stands for "National Auto Sport Association" and "North American Saxophone Alliance", and Space-NASA has been ubiquitous for decades. What about the wealth of acronyms that serve as short-hand for, I dunno, skinheads or call-girls? Most people wouldn't recognize those acronyms, but some people would, and they can be truly, deeply offensive. It's not a huge feat to imagine that these might slip through and be issued (accidentally or otherwise), and it's not much more of a leap to think that maybe a few already have.
Part of me wants to believe that anyone old enough to drive a vehicle is old enough to behave sensibly and maturely about the accidental possibility of unintended and obli1que references to obscenity. But it doesn't last long.
So the DMV is probably going to have to let things slide and learn responses like "you didn't think WTF was offensive when we issued you the plate". In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if we got another form to fill out that shifts liability from the issuer to the issue-ee, something to the effect of "My name is John McCain and I approve this license plate."
Either that, or we're going to start seeing more license plates with their characters seated letter-number-letter-number-letter-number.
FoxTrax GPS Fleet Tracking
Clever solutions for vehicle tracking
www.FoxTraxGPS.com
Labels: current events, humor
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IINM, ROFL is not originally from instant messaging - it's from usenet, and thus very old; as are most of such abbreviations..see wikipedia for some probably accurate info on it.
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