100 WTF Terms From the FBI’s 2014 Internet Slang Dictionary

Internet slang has a tendency to fall out of fashion almost faster than the general population can even learn what it means. But sometimes it was never really in fashion in the first place.

Case in point: The FBI internet slang dictionary of 2014.

That year, after filing a Freedom of Information Act request, MuckRock user Jason Smathers obtained and posted an 83-page “list of shorthand and acronyms used on Twitter and other social media venues such as instant messages, Facebook, and MySpace,” per the report, that the FBI’s Directorate of Intelligence had compiled. It featured some 2800 terms, which the FBI said its employees “should find useful in your work or for keeping up with your children and/or grandchildren.”

The media’s response was as merciless as it was gleeful. The Washington Post called the glossary “hilariously, frighteningly out of touch,” while Intelligencer highlighted 31 “insanely irrelevant” entries. From Boston.com: “FBI Releases List of What They Think is Internet Slang.”

To the FBI’s credit, they really did go all in on the research; there is, for example, every variation of LOL you can possibly think of. The list also includes countless terms that were and still are common—and that FBI agents who weren’t spending much free time on social media might not have been familiar with in 2014—from ICYMI (“in case you missed it”) to TIL (“today I learned”).

But the fact that their researchers decided to be so comprehensive worked against them, too—as there are many, many terms that any self-respecting, chronically online person can’t help but laugh at, either because they’re wildly esoteric, oddly defined, or just plain funny to see in an official FBI document.

Pop culture abbreviations come up from time to time—e.g. POTO for “Phantom of the Opera”—but it appears that the FBI may not have always realized when it was dealing with one. OLLG’s definition, “one less lonely girl,” isn’t capitalized, suggesting that someone wasn’t familiar with the Justin Bieber song “One Less Lonely Girl” and just thought it was a phrase people often said. Same goes for PLL, identified as “pretty little liars.” TARDIS, meanwhile, is simply “time and relative demensions [sic] in space,” as if that would help anyone who doesn’t already know what a TARDIS is.

There’s also the occasional abbreviation that isn’t specific to the internet, like UTI (“urinary track [sic] infection”). Not to mention all the initialisms that are so lengthy it would take more energy and focus to type out each letter than all the words in full—e.g. BTDTGTTSAWIO (“Been there, done that, got the T-shirt and wore it out”) and IITYWTMWYBMAD (“If I tell you what this means will you buy me a drink?”).

Overall, the dictionary has the general air of an “Is your child texting about” meme. And when your child is apparently sometimes texting about ICBINB (“I can’t believe it’s not butter,” lowercase), it’s hard not to BAGL (“bust a gut laughing”). Or, at the very least, C&G (“chuckle and grin”).

So while we applaud the FBI’s effort and recognize the value of the dictionary, we shan’t resist the urge to dunk on it. Here are 100 of our favorite terms.

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