The Acronym Explosion
Pre-1950s Acronyms rare outside military/technical use (e.g., RADAR, SONAR)
Baseline = 1×
1950s–1970s Cold War + corporate expansion → surge (IBM, NATO, UNESCO, TV, DIY)
~5–10× increase
1980s–1990s Global brands, computing, finance (PC, ATM, CEO, SUV)
~20–30× baseline
2000s–present Internet slang + branding + texting (LOL, WTF, NFT, AI)
~50–100× baseline
I’m ancient enough to remember a time before acronyms. In the halcyon days of my childhood in the 1950s we called a spade a spade, and a word a word. One didn’t decimate a perfectly nice word into incomprehensible fragments. We had the time in our unfrenzied world to actually pronounce the entire word in a sentence. “Ma’am, I’m special agent Smith from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” And, surprisingly, we actually spoke in real unexpurgated sentences. (we even knew what a sentence was, because we learned grammar in school) That way everybody knew what the fuck we were talking about. Now, a word is a wd and what the fuck is WTF. We’ve been reduced to babbling idiots (BI) This makes me LOL. I HATE acronyms! BTW, what’s the acronym for acronym?
Inspired while penning this little rant, I coined the acronym AAAA. It stands for Acronyms Are Anger Amplifiers. I expect it to go viral. (GV) on social media (SM) Oops, isn’t SM the acronym for sadomasochist? That defines our sorry lot in a nutshell. As much as I detest acronyms I’m a champion of slang and idiomatic expressions. Put that in your pipe and smoke it. Have a nice day. (HAND)
I too remember growing up in the 1950’s, which was well before the designation “halcyon” was applied to them. Who knew? A lot of forgetting had to take place in order for that to happen. A great many things were simply not done in those days, nostalgia being one of them. We were focused on the future, assuming we were to have one. (I guess some things never change.)
On the subject of exploding acronyms. Living in Omaha, not far from Offutt AFB, SAC and ICBM were especially common ones. Crouched beneath a classroom desk, kissing your sorry ass goodbye, it was cold comfort to reflect on MAD (not referring to my favorite boyhood magazine). Yes, I can tell that you are a writer from the old school: there are multiple sentences in your paragraphs.
Right on A-Ron! The whole acronym business is so ubiquitous that that there aren't enough to go around. BLM, for instance, stands for Bureau of Land Management and Black Lives Matter. I was reading the newspaper last night and an article of (otherwise) particular interest had so many acronyms with no definition or explanation I couldn't tell what the hell they were talking about.