It seems like chat lingo has permanently invaded the vernacular. After all, when was the last time that you had to explain what “LOL” means to someone? From teenagers to grandparents and everyone in between, people are using abbreviations in their everyday life. the advent of cell phones and texting with its 160-character limit has only further enforced this idea. Of course, it didn’t start with cell phones. As the name suggests, chat lingo started in chatrooms, which were popular in the late 90s and early 2000s. Few of those chat rooms still exist, but the language does.
In fact, chat lingo has evolved, and you can see this when you log in to any gaming site. Jackpotjoy Bingo is among the sites where players have developed their own way of speaking, which might seem confusing if you’ve never visited before. Acronyms such as “WTG” pass back and forth between players as a short way of saying “way to go” after a good game or round. Game lingo has become a way to players to congratulate each other on hard work or good luck.
Some acronyms exist especially for bingo games. For example, someone who’s just scored a full house might type “FH” in the chat box to let other plays know of their hand. Someone with a little less luck might hope the next number is theirs and call out “NT” for nearly there. Of course, not everyone has a great round, and players might explain that they are unlucky with the slang “UL.”
Every game site and even some rooms within those sites develop their own way of speaking. You’ll quickly see that some players are regulars who have formed tight friendships with other users over the months or years. Chat slang is just one of the resulting cultural norms that have developed since the advent of the Internet, and it doesn’t stop there. Internet slang expresses actions, feelings, friendship, greetings and more.
Interestingly enough, this sort of lingo seems to evolve. While someone use to type “rotfl” to mean “rolling on the floor laughing,” they now often skip the “T”. As Facebook rose in popularity, users quickly began calling the site “FB.” It’s only natural for people to shorten their words, especially in the age of SMS and Twitter.
The fact that people don’t bat a lash when “LOL” flashes across their screens anymore is almost as telling as the fact that dictionaries have slowly been adding these shortened words. The Oxford-English Dictionary is among one of the publications that have added words like “LOL” to the official index. In case you were wondering, “OMG,” is now in the dictionary, too, FYI. That means “for your information.”