Two Becomes One

Your Guide to Netspeak

Posted on September 21, 2009 by Two Becomes One

So you’ve made your dating profile, got your pics up and you anxiously await that first message. Then you get it. It doesn’t seem to be anything. A bunch of letters, what in the world is this person trying to say? Or perhaps you’re browsing the sites and you see these acronyms and you’re not sure what the messages they contain are. Here’s the scoop which will have you speaking ‘net in no time.

The basics:

These are the ones you will see, more often than not in online singles ads. There are more than this, but these are the ones that most people are using or looking to see.
M or F: This means male or female
ISO: In search of
G, Bi, L, S: Gay, Bisexual, Lesbian, or Straight
D/D: Drug and disease free
RL, IRL: Real life, or In Real Life
LD: Light drinker
CPL: couple
HWP: Height weight proportionate
BBW: big, beautiful woman

What Are You Looking For:

These can also be used in descriptions, but for the sake of what you are looking at when you see them, we’ll put them here. Bear in mind for some of these there may be other variations on the meaning, but, the general gyst will be the same.
F2F: face to face meeting
N/drugs: no drugs
MM: Marriage minded
NSA: No strings attached
SOH: sense of humor
TS/TV: transexual, transvestite
SWF/SWM, SBF/SBM, etc: Single White Female/male, Single Black female/male, also variations with other letters in place of W/M can be other races. As well you may see DWM, etc, D=divorced, M=married, LS=legally separated.
BDSM: bondage, discipline, sadomassochist

What are they trying to say, here?

This one is the part where most people get a little baffled and tend to be confused by all of the different slangs. There are literally thousands of acronyms, abbreviations and smilies for all occasions.
AFAIC: as far as I’m concerned
TMI: too much information, you see this, you either overshared, or they are about to or have
FYEO: for your eyes only, keep it private
IDK/IDGI: I don’t know, I don’t get it
ILU: I love you
IMO: In my opinion
BRB, AFK: Be right back, away from keyboard

As you can see, pretty much everything you can shorten down, the ‘net has done so. Finding your way around this maze of acronyms takes a little getting used to, but at least knowing a few of the basics here can help you to keep yourself from potentially entering an awkward conversation you didn’t mean to have. There is a really good rule of thumb, though when talking to someone who uses these abbreviations and acronyms frequently- when in doubt, just ask. You may feel like you should know, but if you don’t, you may end up saying something that does not make much sense or perhaps answering an ad that you may have wanted to avoid.

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