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Sexting

Do Teens Actually Use These Sex Acronyms? An Analysis

Also: How is "kill yourself" horny?

In 2001 there was an entire evening of BBC One primetime television dedicated to texting. It was called The Joy of Text, obviously, and Ulrika Jonsson presented it, because that is what 2001 was like. I remember watching this, when I was 13, and asking for a mobile for my birthday the following month so I could play Snake on it and text literally my two other friends who had phones. But also in the intervening years I have become more and more convinced that this whole night never happened and the whole thing was some fantastical product of my dying mind. BBC One – really? An entire night of programming about texting? I half remember Vanessa Feltz dancing in front of a brick wall and telling us what "LOL" meant. Did that actually happen, or did I, for some reason, dream it?

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Astonishingly, it happened. I can't believe this year happened. I can't believe I lived through this year. What an absurd era the turn of the millennium really was:

Related: here, in the year of our lord 2k17, there is an "explainer for parents" text message primer doing the rounds on Facebook, originally from The Kim Komando Show in America, but now doing heavy numbers on the PSNI Newry & Mourne page in Northern Ireland. Here it is:

I always like these. Obviously this is a good thing because it's good for parents to be kept abreast of the activity their kids are getting up to on their phones and online, in that murky dark grey space just one step away from reality – a gloomy and dangerous space in the wrong hands. Because obviously we like to pretend teens are dwelling just somewhere between Club Penguin and sincere Tumblrs, but the internet is way, way shadier than that sometimes, and let's be real about that for a moment.

But also:

            RUMORF – Are You Male OR Female?

Ah, no. Sadly, nobody has ever asked that. No teen in history has ever typed that acronym out. What's happened here is someone has stumbled upon a list of rejected song titles from Zayn's last album and put it online as a genuine PSA. And now we have to go through it, together.

GOING THROUGH THIS LIST OF NOT ACTUALLY REAL ACRONYMS THAT TEENS SUPPOSEDLY USE – BUT DEFINITELY, DEFINITELY DON'T – IN ORDER OF WORST TO ABSOLUTE WORST, TOGETHER: AN ARTICLE

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I mean, teens definitely do use the aubergine emoji to mean penis – everyone does; it is because the aubergine means "penis" – but I want to meet the one person alive who didn't, until this PSA went viral, know that. A pipe and slippers dad just yelling "Margaret? MARGARET? THE AUBERGINE EMOJI MEANS 'DINKLE'!" furiously up a set of stairs. Proper Daily Mail comment section stuff. What else don't you know, my dude? What marvels do you discover about the world, each and every day? In a way, it must be beautiful to live a life not knowing that the aubergine emoji means penis. Everything is new to you and you are constantly in wonder.

DOC – Drug of Choice

The only drug of choice for anyone whose parents still care about what they are texting is extremely weak little weed joints smoked on park benches on Friday nights after school. No other drug even comes close to the picture until you're old enough to have a phone contract under your own name. Nobody who does drugs has ever said "drug of choice", just like people who genuinely drink don't say, "What's your tipple?"

MPFB – My Personal F**k Buddy

Two things: why do you need to qualify "fuck buddy" with "my personal"? Like, do you have timeshare on your fuck buddy? Do you need to book appointments? And I find it quite amusing that a list for parents about what teens are saying to each other censors out the word "fuck" just four lines beneath the word "cum". Cum? Cum is fine. Love cum. Love 2 cum. But the word "f**k" is a little too rich for my blood, thank you Lynn.

PRON – Porn

Pretty sure the last time I saw the word "PRON" in place of "porn" was on a b3ta messageboard accessed during a GCSE IT lesson when I was supposed to be making a PowerPoint presentation about the Kennedy assassination. This does not exist. Teens do not use this.

SUGARPIC – Suggestive or erotic photograph

No. Teens do not use the word "sugarpic". "Sugarpic" is what your dad searches for when he wants to quietly look for porn but doesn't dare search the word "porn" because he's convinced, somehow, that the laptop is wired to start emitting a red flashing siren and an alarm sound if he does, and he'll be put immediately on a register. This is how he ended up accidentally buying you that 40-person customised cake for your birthday that year. It's because he was innocently looking for bra photos.

AF – As Fuck

Just really amused by the idea of two parents just suddenly finding out what "AF" means and having to bollock their kid for it. "IS THIS WHAT YOU MEANT WHEN YOU SAID AUNTIE HELEN'S SECOND WEDDING PHOTOS WERE 'GOALS AF'? DO I LOOK LIKE I'M LAUGHING, AARON?"

Q2C – Quick 2 Cum

Who is cumming so much and so quickly that they need a go-to acronym to cover it all, please. How much time are they saving by not typing out the full cum-phrase. How much cum can one human rapidly emit?

MOOS – Member of the Opposite Sex

Linguistics is, on the whole, a slow-moving iceberg, with most of the big, continent-sized changes to it – grammar, nouns, the official documentation of each – coming slowly, across many generations. Apart from teens having words for members of the opposite sex, a facet of the language which regenerates like a snake shedding its skin once every year like clockwork. So everything is piff this and buff that and bad and boujie this, and nobody alive says "MOOS" to mean "Member of the Opposite Sex", because it makes them sound like a retired army general offering to chaperone the local high school dance without anyone even telling him the dance was happening.

RUH – Are You Horny?

It is feasible that teens could say "RUH" – saying "horny" is about the least horny-making thing you can do, so any attempts to disguise and avoid the full impact of the word "horny" could and should be encouraged – but it's also not beyond the realms of possibility that a dog could say it too. Just imagine a little grey dog, all muscle and bustle, grey collar. A happy little fellow. Makes a little skipping noise when he runs on pavement. Real panter. And then he waddles up to you, fixes you with a little dog gaze and goes: ruh. Hahahahaha. Oh, teens.

1174 – Nude Club

1174 AND WELCOME TO THE NUDE CLUB, A PLACE WHERE POWERFUL DANCE MUSIC PLAYS EVERY SECOND OF EVERY DAY, AND EVERYTHING AND EVERYONE IS BATHED IN A MAUVE AND RED LIGHT, AND EVERYONE IS NUDE AT THE NUDE CLUB, NIPPLES ABOUND, GYRATING, 1174 GET YOURSELF DOWN HERE AND DON'T BRING A BRA AT ALL! NUDE CLUB: WE WANNA SEE EVERY ONE OF YOUR PUBES!

1337 or L337 – Leet, a coded alphabet

Nobody who says "1337" is sexting because they are too busy watching streams of emotionless Japanese teenagers playing League of Legends and saving up the money from their Saturday job at Costa to buy a realistic Game of Thrones replica sword. If you're a parent and you catch your kid saying "1337" online, take a deep breath and stop worrying, because they are the least in-danger-of-catching-chlamydia human in existence.

NALOPKT – Not a Lot of People Know That

This one probably does actually get used quite a lot – I only put it in because I like the idea of Michael Caine aggressively narrating teens' sext sessions. Try it, in his voice, right now: "AND TELL ME, STEWART, WOULD YOU LIKE TO GET ME WET?"

GNOC – Get Nude On Cam

I refuse to believe anyone born after 1998 has ever used the word "cam". Anyone who came to and acknowledged reality in 2003 has only known a world with cameras embedded in every surface of it. They have never had to get a special splitter because their massive, creaking desktop PC doesn't have a USB port yet. They've never had to Blu-Tack a small plastic orb to the top of their monitor to take their first, formative selfie with it. They don't even know what MSN Messenger is. They have never said "cam".

KYS – Kill Yourself

If you're a parent whose teen is saying "kill yourself" so often that they need an easily accessible acronym for it then I think you got a bigger problem than whether they are sexting or not, and that problem is that they are starring as the villain in a teen movie where a coven of legitimate witches are bullying whatever the modern equivalent of Lindsay Lohan is.

IN WHICH WE'VE GONE OFF PISTE, A LITTLE BIT, AND I DON'T THINK THE RANKING OF THIS LIST WAS ESPECIALLY SCIENTIFIC, AND DIDN'T REALLY GO FROM WORST TO VERY WORST ANYWAY, SO LET'S JUST CLOSE IT OUT WITH THE ABSOLUTE WORST AND WASH OUR STICKY HANDS AND BE DONE WITH IT:

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53X – Sex

53X isn't really a code, though, is it? Like: it clearly still just says "SEX". I absolutely, 1,000 percent guarantee that Fred Durst owns a skateboard that has this printed along it.

@joelgolby

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