Quiz #72. NICE
My alternative to "OOO" and the search for other O.G. names on the internet in Steve's Stay-at-Home Coronavirus Quiz for July 19, 2020.
It may be a surprise to those of you who have become regular readers, but in the right forum, I am a big fan of brevity.
Less is more.
LIM
Especially in an online world where there are simply too many ways to communicate.
And especially when so many people who live and work online are now living, working and communicating from home.
Back before text messages and mobile devices, most office workers relied on just the desk-top computer and desk phone. In the news organization where I worked, the desk-top-based news program that we used had its own form of instant messaging, the so-called topline, where users could trade short messages back and forth at the top of the screen as people do now with text messages. Just as with text messages, the back and forth of toplines could get confusing and it was sometimes counter-productive. Just as is true now, there were times when it was better just to talk on the phone.
Instead of typing out, “Let’s talk on the phone. Please call me on my office phone when you get a chance. My extension is 2076,” I came up with a short-hand. It was simple and direct which is the gold standard for online communication where LIM. My message:
2076
That was the extension for my desk phone and, in sending those 4 numbers as my topline message, I was telling the other person that I thought it would be best if we talked and they should call me as soon as they were ready and able. Of course, the first few times, I’d explain more fully to people that I thought it best if we talked and that I was ready to discuss things when they were free, but when you work with people regularly, short-hand works. Pretty soon, people knew what I meant when they got the topline, “2076.”
Remember what it was like to work from an office? With open work areas for collaboration?
Note Well: Although the use of toplines has faded, “2076” remains the way I sign off Christmas cards (written as a family newsletter in the form of a “What did NOT happen?” quiz) to some out-of-state co-workers with whom I have worked remotely for many years.
With so many ways to communicate now--email, text, Slack, Teams, home phone, work phone, etc.--I am always on the lookout for short-hand and any way to keep things down to a minimum while not crossing the boundaries of redundancy, urgency and intimacy inherent in each form of communication.
Especially now in these work-from-home times.
If you’re online and working and you suspect another person is online as well, an email usually gets the job done. A follow-up email, “Did you see this?” is likely redundant. If it’s important, it’s best to escalate the communication to something more urgent. A text rather than an email. Still, unless you know the person or know their schedule, it’s best not to ratchet things up with a phone call. Too intimate, too intrusive and maybe too urgent. These days, if I want to talk to a co-worker on the phone, I usually send them a text first. It’s simple and direct:
Talk?
There is also the problem of acknowledging an email or other electronic message. How do you do it in a way that’s short and to the point--without cluttering up the sender’s in-box? Do you even need to acknowledge an email or message if it’s a regularly-sent email (like a passdown note). This can be especially problematic when it’s an email sent to a small group--and the acknowledgments come as a “Reply All.”
Sadly, I once chided a co-worker on a different schedule than my own for emailing me “Thanks, Steve” when he regularly responded to the half dozen emails I’d send to him during my own shift. He was being polite, but I felt that I did not need the acknowledgement. As I told him at the time, this likely said more about me than it did about him--and truth be told, I regret my off-hand-dismissal of his all too uncommon courtesy.
As the coronavirus drags on, I’ve also played around with abbreviations which are another hallmark of brevity in the LIM world of coronavirus communication. When I’m logging off work for a few days, it just doesn’t make sense to put up an “OOO” message. These days, almost everyone’s “Out of Office”--and what I want to convey with the “Automatic Reply” I set up on my email is that I am not online and not regularly checking or responding to emails. What I have settled on is this:
NICE
Not Immediately Checking Email
It’s short, elegant and, well, nice. I’ve got a few other abbreviations. Not as short, not as elegant but I’d welcome your suggestions and reactions by clicking on the comments below.
At the end of my shift, I’m going to start leaving this for my co-workers:
LOGO
Logging Off, Going Offline
At the start of my shift, my new message is:
BORTWA
Back Online, Ready To Work Again
When asked how I’m doing, my usual response of “Living the Dream” (LTD) has changed with the pandemic. It’s now:
STP
Surviving the Pandemic
I know these abbreviations border on the ridiculous, but they keep me amused. Really, my goal always is to cut down on the clutter of communication. If I feel like an email or other online message requires an acknowledgment, I’ve settled on “Copy. Thanks.” Others go for “Thx” which gets the point across with even fewer letters which seems ideal.
The best acknowledgment response I’ve seen from one co-worker is simply this:
k
No “O.”
no capitalization.
No punctuation
One letter does all the work.
Note Well: In proof-reading this, Sara noted that young people use “k” all the time, closing her comment with “k Boomer.” I checked the Urban Dictionary to see if this was true. For the kids today, “k” has an added meaning. For them, it’s meant to be a blunt conversation-stopper. Not just an acknowledgment of what’s been said, but an abrupt way to say, “Enough!” I don’t think my co-worker means it that way. lol.
And so it is that I turn to one of the most interesting things I read this weekend. It was the Saturday, July 18th New York Times article on last week’s security breach of Twitter, “Hackers Tell the Story of the Twitter Attack From the Inside” by Nathaniel Popper and Kate Conger.
If the hackers that spoke to the NYT are right, the whole Twitter attack started as a way for these hackers to buy shorter, online pseudonyms for themselves.
The interviews indicate that the attack was not the work of a single country like Russia or a sophisticated group of hackers. Instead, it was done by a group of young people — one of whom says he lives at home with his mother — who got to know one another because of their obsession with owning early or unusual screen names, particularly one letter or number, like @y or @6.
If you thought my obsession with short abbreviations was ridiculous, apparently you don’t know about the online world of hacking where LIM and short-hand names are cool, costly and O.G.
For online gamers, Twitter users and hackers, so-called O.G. user names — usually a short word or even a number — are hotly desired. These eye-catching handles are often snapped up by early adopters of a new online platform, the “original gangsters” of a fresh app.
Users who arrive on the platform later often crave the credibility of an O.G. user name, and will pay thousands of dollars to hackers who steal them from their original owners.
According to the hackers who spoke to the NYTimes, this is what the hacker who last week somehow broke into Twitter was up to at first. His online handle is “Kirk” and he started out looking to trade information on how to hack Twitter for an O.G. name.
What’s more, if the hackers the NYTimes spoke to are right, the breach happened because “Kirk” first somehow got into the Slack channel for high-ranking Twitter employees. Using internal information on how to access accounts, he shared, hacked and, at least initially, sold that information and access for better O.G. names:
@dark, @50, @@dark, @w, @l, @50 and @vague, among many others.
Not so nice.
LOGO
What did NOT happen?
A. For Will’s 23rd birthday dinner on Saturday, July 18th, Sara did not have a candle for “23,” but she did have candles for “19” and “4.” She put them on the cake as “19” and “4.” My only contribution to the meal was pouring chocolate milk with the chocolate birthday cake that Sara made for Will;
B. Will, still getting over his self-imposed quarantine, wore a mask for the after-dinner birthday celebration of gifts which included an oil-free popcorn maker that I ordered from Amazon;
C. Sunday night, July 18th, my son Ted sent out this article on the family text chain about a report that the team behind the Oxford coronavirus vaccine says the vaccine may be ready by September. For the record, Ted added this message:
Things that will never get mentioned in the daily quiz;
D. Over the weekend, Amanda, the daughter of college friends, embarked on a cross-country road trip with her husband and children. In an email chain that followed, Amanda joked about the “best traveler of the day” and “worst traveler of the day” awards which I came up with for a joint-family Western trip that she was a part of two decades ago;
E. In email, college friend Brooks, the Greek chorus of the quiz, offered the following observation:
Never occurred to me to have a “best traveler” award on any of our family vacations — the entire concept is inapplicable, unimaginable.
Harry, at about age 8 or 9, was well-behaved once for a 2-hour stretch. Turns out he had found some crayons and poster board in the back of the car and made a sign that said “HELP. I AM KIDNAPPED”. Amused himself for a while by pressing the sign against the window whenever we got close to another car. Finally caught him in the act when we were stopped at a traffic light.
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Here’s the next quiz in the series: Quiz #73. 3 Things from Steve.
Here’s the previous quiz in the series: Quiz #71. “Everyone Is Good.”
Here’s the first quiz in the series: Quiz #1. Stella and Social Distancing, March 13, 2020
Here is an archive of all the quizzes.
The quiz is explained here: Steve’s Stay-at-Home Coronavirus Quiz.
Want to let me know how I’m doing with this quiz?
Please let me know about any typos or misspellings.
Comments, corrections and confessions welcome.
(Surely, you can do better than “NICE.”)
Thank you and good night.
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