(I finally learned what “wb” means, and then they throw this at me.)

AFAIK.

According to the wonders of Google, it stands for, “as far as I know”. –as in, “Mushmom respawns about forty-five to sixty minutes after she’s killed, AFAIK,” or, “afaik, all the sanctuary entrance maps have cold eyes.” It’s mostly used as a disclaimer. People who are not sure about their statements’ factuality use “AFAIK” to tag them, even when they have sufficient time to type out an entire sentence. I’m not saying that all abbreviations are bad. Even I use certain abbreviations which help express my anger.

What’s with this sudden influx of “new” slang-term abbreviations though? IDK, but there’s too many. Wait, I G2G. BB guys. TTYL.

Have I simply missed out on AFAIK, failed to recognize it in the peak of its popularity? Have I missed many other things while I’ve wandered off on a tangent? Hopefully, I’m on the circle and not the line, for there’s no way back once you’re on the line, but a path on the circle meets the line over and over again (I have no idea what I meant when I wrote this). Prior to last Thursday, I’d never seen this acronym before; however, there once was a time when I wasn’t sure what “wb” meant.

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*Supercool flash of white light signifying really cheap flashback notification*

HappyNazgul: brb

-HappyNazgul has signed in-

[Buddylist]: wb
HappyNazgul: ty
101iepiat: who what where?
[Buddylist]: eh?
101iepiat: what does “wb” mean?
[Buddylist]: “welcome back”
101iepiat: …
101iepiat: I knew that. >_>

And now, back to our program.
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After years of hard work, placing myself in harm’s way for the sake of learning, enlightenment came upon me like a wind winding through an abandoned city, a clean breath in the midst of dust and age. After extensive research, I learnt the meaning of “welcome back” and many other terms in use. Screenshot: me, posing a question to the Tree of Knowledge. This knowledge didn’t just leap into my hands though. No, no, not at all. I underwent extreme self-sacrifice in the name of scientific discoveries. I’m ashamed at some of the terrible things I had to do (and when people type in italics, you know it has to be bad).

Iepiat tells all

I..
I, um..
I had to play computer games.
I had to interact with absolute [people with an IQ of less than 70] online.
And I had to ask these people what in the world they meant when they belted out abbreviations with 17 consonants, 2 vowels, a few numbers, and a cat thrown in for good measure. Terrible.

Ahem.

Nowadays, I consider myself highly intelligent in the field of conversation deciphering:

• i no wut othrs meen wen dey tipe lyk dis
• I c4n als0 und3rst4nd 7h1s typ3 0f 7yp1ng.
• WTDTTIJDU, AISTTPMUTMOTAATGA.
(When they do this though, I just don’t understand, and I sometimes think people make up the meanings of the abbreviations as they go along.)

IMHO, that gets pretty annoying.

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Author’s notes:

~ Originally posted July 2nd. It took me a while to track down my original draft, decipher it, and retype it.

~ I don’t discourage the use of abbreviations, I’d just appreciate if someone told me what they meant first. ^^”