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The controversy over the the CW show OMFG Gossip Girls has been building for a while now. As the premier date draws nearer, the television station answered the accusations of foul language by stating that OMFG is just letters and could have many different meanings. Maybe they are hoping most parents will buy it. Maybe they think most parents are too stupid to realize the CW is pulling the wool over their eyes. Or maybe, they just don't care if they add the promotion of profanity and blasphemy to a show already riddled with teen sex, drugs, and whatever else their writers can disguise as "addressing valid teenage issues." OMFG has one meaning, and one meaning only. Oh My * God. I'll let you fill in the * with the appropriate four-letter word. The CNN reporters interviewed 30 people on the sidewalk. 28 of those 30 said that OMFG means one thing and one thing only. The 2 who did not know what it meant were women in their 50's. Which is exactly what the CW is banking on. Those parents with teens old enough to watch the show also will not know what OMFG stands for, or think it could be any number of things. Rational thought will tell you that the theory of multiple meanings is ridiculous. OMFG is part of what is commonly known as textspeak. These are sets of letters that stand for certain phrases and came into popular use with instant messaging and text messaging. It saves a lot of time in typing and speeds up the conversation. It is a universally user standardized and accepted practice in the world of the Internet. Whether you are chatting with someone across town, in New York, Hong Kong or Johannesburg, textspeak is the same in the English language. If it were not, as the CW would like you to believe, the whole practice would grind to a halt. No one would know what anybody was talking about if the same three or four letters had multiple meanings. Most textspeak has multiple uses by adding more letters to a basic starting group, but the meaning is the same. OMG stands for Oh my God! IDK stands for I don't know. Let's look at an example that has been expanded. LOL is laugh out loud. ROFL is rolling on the floor laughing. ROFLOL is rolling on the floor laughing out loud. ROFLMAO is rolling on the floor laughing my [three letter word for donkey] off. ROFLMFAO is rolling on the floor laughing my fat [donkey] off. You get the picture. Just like any other widely practiced system of acronyms, textspeak only works if the letters retain the same meaning universally. Does the military, perhaps the most diligent lover of acronyms, have multiple meanings for DOD? Does anyone ever think of anything besides Cable News Network for CNN? Of course not. The whole practical application of acronyms would be lost if DOD meant anything other than Department of Defense, or OMFG had any other meaning in textspeak. Don't be duped by the CW. They knew without a doubt what they meant when they named the show. They have managed with the aid of textspeak to shove blashpemy down the throats of our teenagers and our society, and because textspeak does not fall under the jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission, they are getting away with it.
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