Friday, October 10, 2008

Definitions for the terminally unhip:

Let me field a couple of questions recently asked by those of you who are not total online nerds and actually have things to do in real life:

  1. "What does 'zomg' mean?" Well, when you see "OMG!" on teh intarw3bz, it means "Oh My God!" Internet lore says that "zomg" comes from someone trying to type "OMG", but missing the Shift key with their left pinky and hitting "z" instead. Hence, "zomg". If you are nerdy enough for netspeak to creep into your spoken vocabulary, it is pronounced "zōmĭgŏd".
  2. "What's with the '!!!!1!!!1!one!!!'?" Another net joke stemming from a missed shift key. If someone was really carried away when trying to put a string of exclamation points after something, say in an internet argument, their finger might bounce off of the shift key for a keystroke or two, causing a numeral "1" to be inserted in the string of punctuation. The spelling out of "one" in the middle of the string is intended to indicate extreme hyperbole.

16 comments:

Weer'd Beard said...

Dunno about the first, but the 2nd IS a missed shift-key joke. Lots of missed key ones out there like "pwnd"

TTYL!

the pawnbroker said...

so zomg is a quiet exclaim, as there could be no ZOMG!?

Armed Texan said...

Of course, this now means you have to 'splain "teh intarw3bz". I would do it for you but I'm confused about how the tubes work.

Anonymous said...

Don't forget "733t" . . .

Anonymous said...

lol@n00bz

Anonymous said...

"OMGWTFBBQ" = Typing acronyms is fun!

"OBGWTFPOLARBEAR" = You either were/are a fan of Lost, or you spend enough time in internet fandom to have picked it up anyway.

Anonymous said...

Also, that last one was a genuine typo, and I pray to Gore it will not generate a new meme.

Tam said...

ohbigod! XD

Anonymous said...

OBG(YN?)

Anonymous said...

Have you not noticed the subliminal messages in the word verification images?

catchpa: kavdswdt

See?

Anonymous said...

OBGYN Kenobi!!!!11!!ELEVEN!!1!

Anonymous said...

You mentioned something called "real life." Could you explain what that means?

Anonymous said...

Loki:

That's that time where you do things to keep your WoW account active.

jon spencer said...

Thought that the Z stood for Zombies as in " Zombies, Oh My God".

Cowboy Blob said...

Ditto on the Zombies.

Anonymous said...

@kristopher: There is no RL, only AFK.