When I was a kid the thought of getting something in the mail was great, no matter what it was. As a grown man in my late 20’s, fetching the mail usually means looking at another bill or some worthless piece of mass marketing where someone is trying to sell me something. Yesterday was no disappointment, getting two bills and an AT&T cell phone brochure. This one is a full magazine sized, stapled in the middle and 25 pages thick, clearly they spent money on this. Since I’ve been interested in upgrading to a smart phone and the one I’ve been eyeing up was just released, I glanced through it to see if specs were listed or some more product shots. Disappointed that the phone I was looking for wasn’t listed, I was about to toss the magazine until a quarter page article stuck out, it was an add-on to an article about texting with your teens. What follows is what AT&T has translated from text messages.

Basic

  • YT? – Are you there?
  • - Big smile
  • 4E – Forever
  • F2F – Face-to-face
  • GR8 – Great
  • LMK – Let me know
  • N2K – Need to know
  • U@? – Where are you?

Intermediate

  • DHYB – Don’t hold your breath
  • FFR – For the future reference
  • ILBL8 – I’ll be late
  • KThxBye – Okay, thanks. Goodbye!
  • RB@U – Right back atcha
  • PTMM – Please tell me more
  • *vin – Starving
  • SC$ – Success

Advanced

  • B3 – Blah blah blah
  • FTBOHM – From the bottom of my heart
  • GD&R – Grinning, Ducking and running
  • HB2U – Happy birthday to you
  • TTYL – Talk to you later
  • Y3 – Yadda yadda yadda
  • MHOTY – My hat’s off to you

Am I that old to think most of this shit is nuts? Unless you are on a smart phone, making half of the special characters is a bigger pain in the ass than actually typing it out. Now I’ve done more than 6,000 texts in a month, I’m very capable of texting, none of my friends use any of these stupid shortcuts. In any event, the article points to lingo2word for translations, it is where I learned how to say, dis S realy Fkng lamo.

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