{"id":37944,"date":"2017-04-03T03:00:06","date_gmt":"2017-04-03T07:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=37944"},"modified":"2017-04-01T12:42:48","modified_gmt":"2017-04-01T16:42:48","slug":"decoding-tlas-among-the-puas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/04\/03\/decoding-tlas-among-the-puas\/","title":{"rendered":"Decoding TLAs among the PUAs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kim du Toit<\/a> on a specific example of the use of jargon heavily sprinkled with three-letter acronyms (TLAs) and extended three-letter acronyms (ETLAs, or four-letter acronyms) to create or enhance the impression of their specialized insider knowledge, in this case among the pick-up artists (PUAs):<\/p>\n

In every cult, there are people who try to set their group aside from the rest of the population with language \u2014 in other words, creating a shorthand that only the initiates or insiders know, which (I guess) makes them feel superior to outsiders. Many times, this language is made up of abbreviations or (my particular b\u00eate noir<\/em>) acronyms that create a level of inscrutability to the casual reader or onlooker and render the simplest of statements completely opaque to the uninitiated. (I\u2019ll talk another time about academic language, which shuns abbreviation and acronym in favor of dense, elliptical words and phrases used as a shorthand among fellow academics and gives the users a veneer of erudition, usually false.)<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

All this pales into insignificance by comparison to people who toss off expressions like \u201cThis beta orbiter tried to neg the AMOG in front of the SHB to increase his SMV.\u201d Allow me to translate: \u201cThis weakling who hangs around pretty women trying to curry favor with them tried to cut down a charismatic man in front of a beautiful woman, in order to make himself more attractive to her.\u201d (AMOG = Alpha Male Of [the] Group or Alpha Male Other Guy, SHB = Smokin\u2019 Hot Babe [sometimes V(very)H(ot)B(abe), and SMV = Sexual Market Value.)<\/p>\n

I speak here, of course, of the PUA (pick-up artist) community, in which the High Priests have created this entire glossary of acronyms<\/a> to show that, yes, they are the gate-keepers of knowledge which, if you buy their training manuals or pay to attend their seminars, you too, Mr. Sad Beta Male, can unlock the secrets of access to SHB pudenda<\/em> (Latin alert) and become a \u201cnotch collector\u201d similar to these skilled exponents of the art.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s bad enough when used in a sentence, but when used graphically or in a chart to illustrate a concept or theory, it becomes completely opaque. Here\u2019s a beauty<\/a> which attempts to show the correlation between a woman\u2019s looks and the likelihood of her being bitchy:<\/p>\n

VHB10 -> BQ 0
\nHB9 -> BQ 0-1
\nHB8 -> BQ 1-2
\nPJ7 -> BQ 3-4
\nPJ6 -> BQ 5-7
\nPJ5 -> BQ 6-10
\nPJ4 -> BQ 4-10
\nUG3 -> BQ 1-8
\nUG2 -> BQ 1-4
\nUG1 -> BQ 0-3
\nVUG0 -> BQ 0-1<\/p>\n

VHB = Very Hot Babe, HB = Hot Babe, PJ = Plain Jane, UG = Ugly Girl, VUG = Very Ugly Girl, and the numeric qualifiers 1-10 are the common delimiters on the Female Hotness Scale (FHS). BQ, by the way, is Bitchiness Quotient, and the numeric qualifiers there are the levels thereof.<\/p>\n

Note that this is presented as a scientific analysis or model, when in fact it\u2019s no such thing: it\u2019s a creation solely of the writer\u2019s observation or theory and not by actual, you know, data<\/em> \u2014 but creating acronyms gives it quasi-scientific gravitas<\/em> \u2014 damn it, another Latin word, but you know what I mean, right? It\u2019s kind of a pity, because the author at Chateau Artiste has an excellent way with the English language, when he\u2019s not talking utter bullshit like the above. (Credit where it\u2019s due, though: he also called Trump for the overwhelming electoral victory long before anyone else did, so he\u2019s a more-insightful observer of trends than most mainstream media pundits.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kim du Toit on a specific example of the use of jargon heavily sprinkled with three-letter acronyms (TLAs) and extended three-letter acronyms (ETLAs, or four-letter acronyms) to create or enhance the impression of their specialized insider knowledge, in this case among the pick-up artists (PUAs): In every cult, there are people who try to set […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,73,13],"tags":[1079,262,400,303,255],"class_list":["post-37944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humour","category-randomness","category-usa","tag-altright","tag-culture","tag-language","tag-sexism","tag-sexuality"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9S0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37944"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37944\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37945,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37944\/revisions\/37945"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}