With each passing generation, the ability to interact with the new technology and understand the ever-changing communication modes becomes easier and more intuitive. It is not just the mode of communication that has changed but also the communication itself that has evolved and developed into something that grandparents today would equate to a foreign language. Still, this new language can become a jumble of words to someone who doesn’t know what these abbreviations mean.
Here are a few common sentences that have been abbreviated by the current texting social generation
IMK is used by youth worldwide on social media apps and other platforms to interact and chat with each other. IMK stands for In My Knowledge. This acronym is used when a person is asked a question or a doubt or maybe even asked to express his or her opinion on something.
In My Knowledge or IMK means that as far as that person knows about the topic. It is used to give details and information while giving it may not have all the pieces or the full picture. Still, they might have useful information that can increase the overall knowledge of a certain topic. In My Knowledge or IMK is used when the sender wants to indicate that they might not be entirely sure if the statement they are making is true or false.
Still, they believe it to be true regardless of whether they have good faith in their sources or are confident in their research skills. If a sender sends IMK, meaning in my knowledge, it is an indicator that the recipient must consider the following information with a grain of salt. This acronym is used similarly to AFAIK or AFAIAA, which means As Far As I Know and As Far As I Am Aware. Both of these acronyms are similar in meaning and usage to IMK or In My Knowledge. Still, since IMK is the shorter abbreviation, it is more widely used by social media and other instant messaging services.
MBN is another acronym that is used by youth today to convey their emotions and thoughts in as few words as possible. MBN stands for Must Be Nice and is either used to appreciate what someone uploads or sends to a person on various social media sites and can also express jealousy or envy at usually what someone is doing. It can also be used to express envy on seeing one’s latest post or update on a social media site.
It is also used as a hashtag on pictures that might catch people’s eye and make them then “Wow, that must be nice!” When marked with hashtags such as MBN, such pictures can be individually searched for using the hashtag itself and are shown with other similar pictures of the same type that carry the same hashtag MBN. The use of hashtags can help people reach new audiences and explore pre-existing audiences in-depth.
If someone is running a travel account and posts pictures of a five-star hotel with the hashtag MBN, they can reach out to a new audience that likes looking at the rich’s lives and likes looking at things they aspire to have by searching for the hashtag MBN. It also helps further explore the pre-existing audience of travel lovers and travel enthusiasts since one post can contain multiple hashtags allowing for more specific targeting. This can also come in handy when wanting to sell merchandise or products to a specific target group. Hashtags are a good way to boost how many people see you and your account, and popular hashtags such as MBN have the largest reach.
OBJ is another abbreviation that people may come across on social media or while texting other people. While social media users are using many abbreviations these days, and many people are not sure of what they really mean, OBJ is not one of them.
In fact, it is a rendering error meaning that whatever is supposed to be in that place cannot be rendered or is not supported by your device and operating system. This results in the OBJ render showing up in a little dotted outline. This, while it looks like any other acronym and what many would even guess to mean the object is just an error message telling you that this particular character or series of characters cannot be rendered on your computer or phone for one reason or another.
This is because your phone software is not up to date or just that the character is specific to a particular operating system and cannot be shown on a device running on another operating system or an older version of the same operating system. While OBJ does stand for the object of a sentence from a grammatical viewpoint, in this case, in the online messaging world, it stands for “Object Replacement Character” It is a placeholder text that is used to let the user know that this particular object cannot be rendered. So the next time you see this character, know that it is not actually what the person sent you. Still, an error message saying what the person has sent you cannot be displayed on your screen for some reason, which is fixable most times, but sometimes when it comes to software, exclusive content may not be.
While the world is filled with many more such short forms that can convey sentences worth of information in just a couple of words, it is sometimes too hard to keep track of them all. At the same time, some more well-known abbreviations such as IMY (I Miss You), IDK (I Don’t Know), OMG (Oh My God), and POY (Proud Of You) well knows there are many others that a majority of people don’t know about. In case you ever come across another such abbreviation that you don’t know what it stands for, the best thing you can do is ask because there are too many acronyms to count, and no one will blame you for forgetting a few.
