I really should be paid for those little adverts, but, alas, it’s only a labor of love. I just had to share netlingo with my readers on my own little corner of the net. If you didn’t quite grab what I was saying from the above advert, well, that’s my fault. For clarification, netlingo is a website dedicated to capturing, defining, and archiving past, present, and future cyberslang. If you ever cared to understand those ppl in the chatrooms, especially the chatrooms of the techy variety, you’ll need to use netlingo. Or you could just ask them what they mean, but that’ll make you look like a noob. And you can’t afford to look like a noob on the net. Yeah, I just used the word “noob”. Is that even used anymore? Back when I played MMOs in the early 2000s, you couldn’t go one day without being called a noob. Noob seems to have fallen into disuse, unfortunately, and only the old folks like me remember being called a noob. Oh how the times have changed.
That brings us to another great feature of netlingo. It archives the cyberslang of old. If you ever caught yourself wondering about the Internet of old, like yours truly, then just hop on over the netlingo. There are few better ways to understand the Internet’s past than by understanding the slang of the past. I never thought I’d run into the word “Netscape” again, but I just did give minutes ago, and I’ve regret it since.
Just giving netlingo a simple lookover is enough to rend me to shreds of nostalgia. All of those words which I never truly appreciated until they were dead and gone, like the word noob. The famous subset of cyberslang known as Leetspeak or, more properly, !337$p34k, once the hallmark of the annoying brat in a chatroom is now a lost art form. I can’t believe I miss leetspeak as much as I do. Perhaps I’m just a nostalgic fool lamenting the days when the English language was freely butchered, but, perhaps, there is something more to it. The leetspeek of old represented something about the net that I think has been forgotten. It represented the net itself. Leetspeak was only used on the Internet. It never left. And the net has become its grave. Leetspeak is now a dead language. Come to think of it. I haven’t seen it used at all in recent years. And I frequent forums where leetspeak would be welcome or, perhaps more accurately, tolerated. Even within the gaming community, leetspeak is struggling to stay afloat. Such a sad state of affairs. Good thing we have netlingo to archive the web’s past. When leetspeak finally falls out of use, a little piece of the Internet will have died with it.
If you’re new to the net, but you probably aren’t if you’re reading my blog, there is a section on netlingo documenting the Top 50 Newbie Terms Everyone Needs to Know. If you’re a net veteran, go on and test your knowledge of netspeak by reading through the list, if you’ve got the guts! I’ll admit there are some words in that list even I didn’t know. I’ve brought shame onto this blog, but I hope to correct this vicious wrong by brushing up on my netspeak by using netlingo!
Of course, it isn’t all fun and games at netlingo. Many of the archived words aren’t just slang (or maybe they are), they define both new and legacy applications, programs, systems, etc. It’s a serious trip to the past, back when 56kbps was enough to give you whiplash. And, like I said above, I never thought I’d here the word “Netscape” again. Even the word “legacy” has become legacy. I guess, in the end, we’re all doomed to become legacy. That is, if we’re lucky enough to become legacy. At least legacy is remembered and still used on occasion.
Much like Wikipedia and Urban Dictionary, netlingo is user-supported. So jump on over and add your own online jargon to the aggregate. Let others profit from your great stores of cyberspeak knowledge. You get to define the future of e-lingo with your own contributions. Give and gain alike. And, speaking of the future, as we’ve become increasingly more tech-oriented, netspeak has entered society’s general lexicon. Lol, lmao, brb, and afk are now used publicly, without fear of ostracism, in front of live people! It makes you wonder if netspeak will become the standard slang of years to come. It’s already integrated itself into the public lexicon and I don’t think its going to fade away any time soon. Technology is here to stay and so is the language of technology, netspeak. Okay, digression over.
I couldn’t do justice to netlingo with just one post, but I did my best. I’ve given you just a taste of what is offered at netlingo.com. It’s a serious cornucopia of treasures, nostalgia, and bits of wisdom. Don’t be left in the dark, go forth and learn!
Seriously, I wasn’t paid for this post. Though, I wish I had been paid. I don’t do this for free, you know. Okay, I do do this for free. Free entertainment for the webcrawlers. Machines need love too.
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