The How and Why Guide to Online Dating by Nizze Egg - HTML preview

Learn how to LOL

When you begin your online search for love or friendship, one of the most common ways to communicate with another online dater is through an instant messenger system. Some websites have these programs embedded in their sites, while others do not. In either case, you can choose to use a third party messenger system, such as those provided for free by AOL or Yahoo. However, no matter how you connect with another person for a chat session, one thing is a certainty—you need to understand the modern language used on messaging programs.

Talk may be cheap, but time is priceless, so when speaking online, many shortcuts are used to speed up the process. Conversations, because of this, take less time online than say, for instance, on the telephone. Many phrases once unique to online instant message talk include acronyms such as LOL (laugh out loud), BRB (be right back), BBL (be back later), ILU (I love you), and TTYL (talk to you later.) A/S/L is a common online acronym used exclusively on dating sites—it means “age, sex, location?” and is used to show initial interest in getting to know another person.

Learning to use online instant messenger systems goes beyond LOL and BRB. You also must be able to use emoticons, also called “smilies.” Use by all of the major free online messenger systems, emoticons can also be inserted into the text or emails. A happy face appears, for example, as the following: :-). Other commonly used emoticons include :-( sad, >:-( angry, :-o surprised, :-* kiss, :-x not speaking, ;-) wink, and the ever popular :-p tongue-stick-out. Of course, you can be creative and make your own or search the web to see elaborate and funny emoticon creations. Some messenger programs have certain set emoticons that you can choose from a list to be inserted into your text as a picture.

Online language is all about being quick and to the point. Many people find that instant messaging can become addicting, as it is often more easy to be frank when you are not face to face with another person. Flirting online can be fun and addicting as well. Remember not to take up too much of the other person’s time. If you are both enjoying the conversation, that’s great, but if the other person is not replying to your messages, he or she may not be interested or may have stepped away from the computer. Respect this and wait politely before sending yet another message. If you learn the language of the Internet, you are one step closer to finding your love online, so practice your LOLing and I’ll TTYL.