Whale whale whale, what do we have here?
If you game, chat, reddit or simply surf the internet a lot (like we do) you will definitely encounter and become familiar with what is known as the backbone of the internet pop-culture, it’s slang.
Let’s dive in to it (you get it? “dive” like a Whale, lol)!!
1. ROFL
2. Meme
“An idea that spreads like a virus by word of mouth, email, blogs etc” (via internetslang.com). In simpler words, all those funny pictures, quotes and videos you see online, especially on 9gag.com, are called memes. Think of memes as the ultimate internet fame. It’s the next level after virality. (and if you don’t know, its pronounced ‘Memmay’ and nothing like meem, mime, memi or whatever weird combination of sounds you were using before).
3. Plox
Means Please. This one comes from gaming. Whenever people are playing and under pressure they would miss-click and write plx instead of pls. This is how it evolved from please> pls> plx> plix> to plox
4. Fap
This is a funny one. It is actually a term from biology books meaning: Fixed Action Pattern. However on the internet, it’s slang for masturbating.
5. GTFO
Get The Fuck Out. Simple as that. Usually it is associated with this meme.
6. BRB
Be Right Back. This is something you tell your friends when chatting and you need to go away for a minute. Its funny, because a lot of people don’t know what it means, and they would be so mystified what happened to you.
7. Afk
This one stands for “Away from keyboard”. The difference with brb is that this one represents a state you are in. I personally know this one from gaming back in the day, when I was playing Diablo. There was even a code in Battle.net which makes you afk for your friends to see. When you write “/afk having dinner” it will automatically tell all the people who are PM-ing you that you are having dinner.
8. GIF
“Graphics Interchange Format’ or the moving pictures you see online. They became extremely powerful on the internet with the raise of memes. The reason people love GIFs is that they give you the chance to express a lot by just showing a little. And even looking at the basics, A MOVING PICTURE IS AWESOME!
9. Vlogging
With the raise of YouTube and other video websites, vlogging became extremely popular and started substituting the classical blog. And this is what it actually is. It is simply a video blog. The main way that it differs from classical blogs is that it is most of the times created by people who already have some popularity either online or offline.
Now that you know what all these mainstream internet words mean, you have the complete power to use them as much as you want. Whether you will simply do it because you like how they sound, or because it will make you feel awesome and cool, it doesn’t matter to me. Just make sure you don’t misuse them.