Baby Boomers, How Much Do You Know About Millennial Internet-Speak?

You don't have to be online a lot to know this term. "Don't feed the trolls" is a common admonition -- meaning don't respond to their negative comments or posts.

If your comment has sunk to a low position or a second or third page, you can move it up by just writing "bump" at the end. Or, if you want to be subtle, you might add new material to your post, but people often see through this tactic as just another way of "bumping."

"DM me" is a quick way to ask someone to take a public conversation (like on Facebook) private. Back in the day, we used to say "take it to email" instead, but nowadays most social media sites have direct-messaging capabilities built in.

"Noob" is sometimes rendered with two zeros for the o's ("n00b"). If you recognize the terms "grommet" and "kook," they're from surfing -- "grommet" is a beginning surfer and "kook" a hapless unskilled one.

In other contexts, this grammatical symbol is called a pound sign or octothorpe. But the hashtag was born on Twitter, where it made it easy to look up a trending theme or idea. #utility

The mid-2000s were a period when you either "won" or "failed" on the internet; nothing in between. So the verb "fail" became a noun, culminating in the expression "epic fail" which tended to flash in big letters over gifs of cars sliding into snowbanks or dogs falling off couches.

"Pwn" is a corruption of "own." It means to dominate or to have mastery over, so the "p" also implies the word "pawn" -- you've been made a pawn or an insignificant tool. (Note that this, like "epic fail" seems to be on its way out).

Reddit commonly hosts "AMA" forums. A celebrity or notable person fields the questions from the general public.

When "facepalm" is written online, it means the reader should imagine the writer performing the gesture of putting their face down in their hand. Often, an asterisk before and after indicates a word stands for a physical movement. *clicks through to next question*

Yes, as part of Western civilization's ongoing excessive-free-time crisis, we developed a compliment specifically about well-groomed, great-looking eyebrows. It's since broadened to mean someone's overall look is in order.

This is often used when you want to meet someone. "Hey, we need to get together IRL."

While a lot of internet slang comes from the Black and gay community, some come from smaller subcultures, like hacker culture or the world of fanfiction writing. "Ship" is from fanfiction, where it means a romantic pairing between characters (that often didn't exist in canon, like Harry/Draco in "Harry Potter.") So, if you "ship" a couple, real or fictional, it means you're eager for them to get together.

Both of these were popularized by the hugely-popular Twitter feed "We Rate Dogs." This is also where the more-than-10-out-of-10 rating came from, e.g., "13/10."

The definition of "basic" Has gotten narrower in recent years. It now implies a young woman who likes Pumpkin Spice Lattes, yoga pants (outside yoga class), and brunch.

"Woke" is sometimes used ironically about middle-class Caucasian people who voice all the right opinions and change their Facebook profile picture following every passing trend. YouTube's "ultra spiritual guy," JP Sears, wears T-shirts with the legend "Woke AF."

These sound sillier the longer we look at them, but "stay woke" is the least silly. Fortunately, it's also the one that's correct.

This word seems to be a Japanese adaptation of the English "emoticon," similar to the way the word "fantaji" means "fantasy" in romanized Japanese. However, there's an argument that the whole word is Japanese in origin: "e" meaning "picture" and "moji" meaning "character." Either way, the word is here to stay!

This phrase means "totally adorable" and is textbook "basic" slang. Hackers *used* to generate a lot of slang, but lately they seem too busy making elaborate Etch-a-Sketch type pictures out of punctuation marks to invent new words.

"Fan fiction" is a term that mutated quickly. First, it became one word: "Fanfiction." Then, it became "fanfic." Nowadays, an individual work can be referred to just as a "fic."

People "catfish" friends and acquaintances for a variety of reasons: to flirt with an unattainable crush, to get honest answers from somebody, or just to enjoy a sense of power over the other person.

"Throwing shade" came first from drag-queen culture. You don't have to be in someone's presence to throw shade at them; celebrities frequently do it in interviews, in which they make veiled slurs about a rival.

Eminem's annoying song "Stan," from 2000, is about a disturbed fan with that name, who sends letters to Eminem, which the rapper doesn't answer in time, leading to a murder-suicide. The simpler explanation is that it's just a combination of "stalker" and "fan," for someone whose fan-hood goes a little too far.

"Thick" can mean "overweight," generally not thought of as a good thing. But it also tends to mean curvaceous and "bootylicious," so it might well be a compliment.

"GOAT" is an acronym for "Greatest of All Time." You might have seen it on a TV commercial for Twitter, in which famous people debated who was "the GOAT."

"Turnt" has long been a vernacular pronunciation of "turned." Its recent use, to specifically mean "drunk or high," probably alludes to the way personality and moods change under the influence.

"I can't even" is a standalone way of saying "I'm overwhelmed!" Of course, if you want, you can add explanatory material at the end: "I can't even right now!" or "I can't even with you!"

Although "live-action photoshopping" would be very cool, the actual term is "photobombing." Lots of photobombs are accidental -- little kids or animals wander into the frame.

Twitter is represented by a bird. So it makes sense that new users would have an unhatched egg as their profile pic, but some users never replace them. We're looking at you, Boomers!

According to Merriam-Webster, this term has its roots in a Ja Rule song, "Clap Back," which was part of the back-and-forth rivalries of the rap world. It's rare for slang to be so easily traced to a source, but this is one case where it is.

We've been needing this one lately, am I right? 2017 really turned out to be the Year of the Creeper.

"Left-swiping" is what you do to profiles that don't fit what you're looking for. We're not sure what happens if you left-swipe someone on the Dark Web, but we'd recommend against it - you might just have put out a hit on them!

You didn't have to be online to use this. Lots of people, back around 2011 and 2012, were saying "Winning!" in a bright and ironic voice, imitating Charlie Sheen.

The internet is not a place that rewards good punctuation. Which is why it's all the more ironic that someone took the trouble to correctly punctuate "TL;DR" -- a semicolon is the rare but correct mark you'd use if you wrote those words out. And they correctly punctuated an expression meant to say they didn't really care about writing. #winning

This stands for "Not Safe For Work." In other words, you shouldn't open it there, at least while anyone else is within peeping distance of your screen.

It seems this one will never be settled. We think there's a little more basis for the hard g, since the word it represents, "graphic," starts with a hard g sound.