Gaming jargon becomes word of the year - w00t!
January 7, 2008 6:05 pm Gaming NewsAccording to the BBC, the word “w00t” has become word of the year, as voted for in a poll by Merriam Webster. Yes. That is what our language is coming to - crap made up by fanboys.
For those who don’t know, the term “w00t” (with either numbers or letters in the middle) originated pre MMO time, back in the days of DnD board games. There’s no real agreement on what the abbreviation stands for, but some guesses are:
- “Wow, loot”
- “We owned other team”
- “Want one of those”
MMORPGs such as EverQuest and World of Warcraft brought the term to the mass market, as gamers would regular use the term as an expression of joy. However, over use of the term means that many have adopted it as a more sarcastic statement. Some examples:
- When a boss mob is killed - “WOOOOOOT!” - basically like, “HELL YEH!”.
- When a mob drops a rare loot - “WOOT!” - basically like, “Ooooh yeh!”.
- When someone links a crap item - “woot” - sarcasm.
- When someone does something utterly average - “woot” - like, “yeh whatever”
Officials from around the world agree that this is indeed the end of civilisation as we know it. A spokesman from the Whitehouse earlier today told the world’s media that the American government are working on a strategy to convert American English into a series of 5 simple words. These terms will be the only words taught at schools and pupils will be encouraged to emphasis them correctly to give them different meanings, using a combination of electro shock treatment and a long stick.
The 5 terms in question are:
- w00t
- l33t
- ding
- OMFG!
- Antelope
President Bush closed the press conference with the following statement: “W00t….tee hee”.
It is thought that this new education system is designed to remove some of the burden on both teachers and pupils - you know, stuff like learning words and being able to write / type properly.
I for one welcome our new ant overlords…
Critics of the reform claim that this will just further the problem, rearing a nation of illiterate yobs using nothing more than rudimentary language skills less advanced than that used by your average colony of ants.
The Whitehouse failed to respond to this as their PC broke and they can’t use the thesaurus in Word to find out what rudimentary means.
MTNLNOWL
(Make The Nation Literate Now Or We’ll Leave) oppose the move, claiming that any system that requires people to use more than one syllable to communicate with is just plain silly. They claim that the English language is too dated and should be refined to its very core - single letter abbreviations.When asked, “well, don’t you think that could lead to some misunderstandings when people take different meanings from the same sentence”, they responded, “she told me she was 18 and I resent the implication”.
So are you l33t or don’t you know WTF that is?
Is w00t worthy of becoming word of the year? Is it even a word (it has numbers in it…)? Do you even care? I thought not.
10 points and go to top of the class to anyone who can come up with the wittiest sentence that this abbreviates…
WINACBIDLGW
Game on!