▷The FBI and the internet slang vocabulary 🥇

Lo internet slang can be difficult to interpret, especially for FBI agents (which stands Federal Bureau of Investigation, FYI). For this reason the agents filled out a list of 2.800 words, long well 83 pages, which collect the abbreviations and acronyms most beaten on keyboards around the world, like LOL e IMHO. But also acronyms that no one outside of Quantico has ever used like BTDTGTTSAWIO.

Internet slang and the FBI vocabulary to understand it

Perhaps we have never reported such old 'news'. The Bureau first published this 83-page document in 2014, due to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) which called for greater transparency on federal law enforcement practices in the United States. But Emma Roth of The Verge talked about it after discovering an old post on the site about it and we, like her, could only be fascinated by this news.

The guide explains that "with the advent of Twitter and other social media on the Internet, the use of abbreviations and acronyms has exploded". For this reason, the investigative office felt the duty to "fill out an extensive (but not even remotely exhaustive) list "to allow agents to understand the speech on platforms such as"Facebook e MySpace“. LOL.

Instead of using resources likeUrban Dictionary (we checked, born in 1999) or just one Google search, the FBI wanted to concoct a comprehensive guide to internet slang. Which probably got old the minute after compiling.

Some of the more bizarre terms on the list

Some of the terms in the list have become so used that many users no longer even think about the phrase they refer to. LOL (the acronym, not the series on Prime Video) implies that you are laughing even without thinking about “laughing out loud”. FAQ They are going to “frequently asked questions”, but English is no longer needed to understand what they mean. ASAP it hurries even those who don't know what it means “as soon as possible”.

And even if we all happen to not remember from time to time acronyms like IMHO ("In my humble opinion" for when we want to have our say), FYI (“For your information” for when we explain something) or AFK (“Away from keyboard” for when we answer after a long time), dal context we can often understand what the other person is referring to.

But some of those listed on the FBI are acronyms so long, complicated and bizarrely specific that we can only grin (acronym STLCeBSCNPCS, if the Italian Postal Police wanted to make a similar list). Among the best ones:

BTDTGTTSAWIO (been there, done that, got the T-shirt and wore it out). An incredibly complicated version of BTDT
BTWITIAILWU (By the way, I think I am in love with you), the least convinced declaration of love a keyboard can produce
NAK (Nursing at keyboard), per le mamme Nerd
420, which for the FBI very generally means "drugs"

The internet slang guide deserves an update

There were also abbreviations on the FBI list that had very little to do with internet slang. Such as DNR, which stands for "do not resuscitate" and is used in medicine to prevent therapeutic persistence. Or DNS, Domain Name Service, which while essential for internet use is certainly not teen jargon on TikTok.

Also there are errors of understanding, such as LUL that would stand for "lame uncomfortable laugh“, More a description than an acronym (it's simply a derivation of LOL for awkward situations). Or LOLOL which stands for "lots of laughing out loud". In short, it seems that at the time the FBI did not understand that internet slang becomes a real language: LOL is now a word, not an acronym, and therefore has accretives and diminutives as a normal adjective.

After the huge investment made by the US law enforcement agencies to move some of their power online, we are sure that the Today's government hackers are much more aware of the internal language of chat and social media. So we're sure they could compile a new list, probably more accurate.

But on the other hand, we suspect that internet slang is so much dynamic e changing with each new generation learning to use a keyboard, that even a second list could make us grin the same way. So we would like to see the second edition. Maybe including federal agent-style descriptions of the meme and GIF most used (JJ Jameson of Spiderman laughing heartily).

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