I found this game on Sporcle about supposedly common chat acronyms. What I think is interesting is that if you go through the game and then click to see the most missed, only 2.6% got all 30 acronyms correct. In fact, the least correctly guessed term was TAFN (that’s all for now) at 10.9%. At that point, would you even say that these are “common?” And on what scale–to who? Common to the mass general public or to the more select computer geeks who use terms like “n00b?” I certainly didn’t know them all; nor do I want to align myself with that particular kind of type/speech anyway.
Plus, terms like NIMBY (not in my backyard)–what’re they being used for within chat? My understanding of it is for more urban development reasons than any kind of chat usage. Can something like that transfer over to the virtual environment with virtual places to “protect?”