Just what the heck does THIS mean?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’ll admit that I’m no longer “with it,” like around 20 years ago, but I know a pretty good amount of the kid slang these days.

But, I’m now confused. I like to occasionally read chat rooms, finding them entertaining, and I go to some of the various limited function message boards and I’ve been seeing things like this pop up from what I figure is kids:

'Wil c u 2morro. 287"

‘Colz man. 429.’

“896”

‘Da big 947!’

What do the numbers mean? Some numerical way to send those idiotic looking, hand twisty, finger crimping gang signs? PS numbers? (Public Schools.)

Darn! Maybe I need to dig out my Bosco secret decoder ring or something.

2

Oh God!!! something else to learn…

3

Darn kids! I don’t think they even know what half of those abbreviations stand for. They just refuse to admit it because they’d rather have their fingernails removed with pliers than have any of their p-p-p-peers think them unhip.

4

Ha, ha! Funny you should ask…

If you take the cosine of the number in question, multiply it by it’s square root, take the absolute value of that result multiply it by Pi and then add 420 and divide by 365. When you round to the nearest whole number you get the result of 1.

It’s pretty clear to me what that means.

It means…I’m even more out of touch with today’s youth than SpyderA48

5

disclaimer: I’m 42 years old. Having said that…
Look at the keypads of a telephone. Notice that there are correspondences of letters and numbers (e.g., 2=a, b, c). Note also that a heck of a lot of Today’s Youth carry about pagers which are set up to receive, as message, the number you are to call back. Well, suppose that, limited to being able to leave that limited kind of message, you wanted to say something other than “555-1234”?

I think that’s what it is about.

287 could be “bus” or several other more meaningful three-letter phrases and/or acronyms.

6

Bus?!

You mean, after butchering up the rest of the written English language on the chat boards, they couldn’t just print bus, or something similar to it?

7

You know, I’m 18 and I haven’t the foggiest.

And, on reflection, the fact that I use phrases like “haven’t the foggiest” might be indicative why…

8

Personally, I can’t stand ANY Internet slang. “LOL” is one that makes my teeth grind… “ROTFLMAO” is like root canal. “Latez” is one that just annoys me (Lah-tez?)… can’t they type “r” instead of “z”? Similarly, “L8r”… no, it’s NOT the mark of an educated person!

I’m more pissy about 'Net-slang than ChiefScott is about smilies.

9

Damn! I keep reading this thread hoping SOMEONE will know…

No such luck, so far…

BTW: SPOOFE I hate :)'s and 'net lingo, too!:mad:

LOLARAQ!! (laughing out loud and running away quickly) :wink:

10

It’s not just net slang that baffles me. Real life kids are truely bizzare. Why do they have to walk down the middle of the street with traffic whizzing by when there’s a perfectly good sidewalk? Why is only ONE pant leg rolled up?

I guess the job of todays youth is the same as it ever was. Cheese off everyone older than themselves. Kids today are just stupider about it.

11

I hate kids.

12

My best guess: it may be related to the page that a friend of mine kept getting from his girlfriend. She’d send him a page with nothing more than “143”. He told me it meant “I love you”; ya see, “I” = 1 letter, “love” = 4 letters, “you” = 3 letters.

So, my guess is it’s the letter-count for some 3-word phrase. Asking them is the shortest route to finding out.

13

Alright, that may be it, but I just have to say, as a 16 year-old member of the generation in question, that is the dumbest friggin’ thing I’ve ever seen. I try to keep away from internet slang as much as possible, but my friends use it on a regular basis, and it makes me want to pull my hair out. The only phrase I use is “brb” (be right back), and that’s usually because I’m being pulled off the computer at the moment that I type it. I guess I’ll never be “with it”.

14

Perhaps they’re expressing deep, heartfelt pride for their area codes? Let’s see:

212 in da house! Mad props 2 all my grrlz, l8r, LOL!!!

bbiab!

(OUCH… I am reminded of a Tom Servo quote: “She’s just not down with the street, Joel!” Yep, that’s me…)

15

Hey! I can answer one!

Rue, the one pant leg is copying bike messengers, who do it to avoid catching their pantleg in the chain…

16

<disclaimer> If the preceding was meant tongue-in-cheek, pay no attention to the following. </disclaimer>

As much as I’d like to believe that today’s youth are emulating bike messengers in their daily dress, I would tend to think that this is more likely fashion inspired by the hip-hop community. I’m guessing the pants being worn were some type of wind pants? The fashion trend is simply to wear one leg up and one down.

You may occasionally hear something saying that this is gang related, but I would venture the guess that 95% of the time it isn’t.

17

I have a few problems with those kids walking down the middle of the road thing too, but I play chicken with them and they usually move rather fast.

I could not stand the asymmetrical haircut the ‘guyz’ used to wear. Like a sugar bowl haircut with the left or right side shorter than the other and I certainly am not pleased with the skinhead or bald look. I always figured that the girls had more sense, because no matter how stupid the boys looked, the chicks always looked good.

Now I’m spotting girls with these pseudo-black-cotton-dayz-square-chunks sticking out of their heads or odd rows of curious, lumpy braids going from forehead to the back. I’ll take spiked, colored hair any day over these two styles. I did spot some young black girls wearing afro-puffs and I thought those were cool, remembering them from the early 70s.

I don’t mind the Goth look, nor the Vampyer look, though being male, of course I think the guys look like dorks. I’ll be real pleased when the ‘in da hood/little rascals’ look goes away.

Now, I have a slight problem when I admire a beautiful woman jogging or walking along and she has on these expensive trainers, runners, walkers, whatever type sneakers that make her feet look like futuristic boats. You expect a guy to dress clunky, but, somehow, you expect women to have better tastes.

At least the kids – hooray!-- have started wearing cool platform sneakers circa 70s and embroidered bells circa the 60s. Well, girls mainly. Da guyz still wear enormous sneakers and dress in ‘da hood’ clothing, mostly.

You know, I’m glad I don’t have any kids today. I’d be fighting with them, especially the boys, over their clothing and haircuts. Well, on second thought, not the haircuts because they would not be allowed to get those kooky ones.

I wonder if they still make butch wax? Do barbers still know how to make a flattop? Do they still make hair tonic?

In addition, no kid of mine would ever be allowed to grow a beard of any sort until he graduates. I’d have to think about sideburns. It seems every serial killer likes to wear them.

:smiley:

18

SpyderA48… You’re like a breath of fresh air…

19

Personally, I can deal with the "LOL"s and the "BRB"s; it’s spelling like “kewl” and “boyz” that makes my head spin around a la Linda Blair.

checking forum Yep, that was mindless and pointless, so good thing we’re in the right forum.

20

I run a series of sporting events for kids 10-16 years old. Every day I get completely unintelligible emails from these kids. Every word is abbreviated, all lower case, no punctuation or spell check and my biggest peeve- no closing. No name, addy, phone number, nada. How bright do you have to be to figure out if you’re emailing me to register a team, I might need your name?!!!
Grrrr…I seriously wonder about the future…

I have no idea what the numbers in the OP mean, however.