WTF FBI? Agency Has Huge List of Twitter Slang (and Some of It's Fake)
Here's nine of the weirdest. ALOTBSOL, AMIRITE?
A few years ago there was a gag going around the Internet warning parents that if their kids use acronyms like "LOL" and "OMG" they're actually speaking in Satanic code, professing faith in "Lucifer our Lord" and commanding "Onward, murder God." Well, "with the advent of Twitter and other social media venues, the use of shorthand and acronyms has exploded." EXPLODED?! Sounds dangerous! So the FBI has compiled a similarly ridiculous and substantially longer list of Internet slang that parents "should find useful in your work or for keeping up with your children and/or grandchildren."
According to documents retrieved on Friday in a Freedom of Information (FOI) request by MuckRock's Jason "FOI Geek" Smathers, the FBI's Directorate of Intelligence Research Support Unit created an "extensive—but far from exhaustive—list of shorthand and acronyms used on Twitter and other social media venues."
It's bizarre that the FBI compiled an 83-page, 2,800-entry dictionary of slang terms that are mostly already on Urban Dictionary. What's even weirder is that a sizeable chunk of the acronyms have probably never been used or, at least, not to an extent that they warrant FBI research. Try memorizing, saying out-loud, or figuring out a situation in which you would ever use these highlights:
- ALOTBSOL, "Always look on the bright side of life"
- BTDTGTTAWIO, "been there, done that, got the T-shirt and wore it out"
- EOTWAWKI, "end of the world as we know it"
- HCDAJFU, "He could do a job for us"
- IITYWTMWYBMAD, "If I tell you what that means will you buy me a drink?"
- IOKIYAR, "It's okay if you're a Republican"
- LFBBEG, "Looking for big bad evil guy"
- KTBSPA, "Keep the backstreet pride alive"
- PMIGBOM, "Put mind in gear before opening mouth"