OMG QQ!

With the advent of modern day computing, our own language has been broken down and sliced into a series of shortened words, emotions and meaning which make up what people like to call “net lingo.” From common phrases like BRB (Be Right Back), or OMG (Oh My God!), you can find just about any word, phrase, or sentenced compacted online.

One phrase I’ve come across more and more is “QQ” which has origins dating back to the old dial-up BBS days of the early 1990’s. QQ started out as a modified “quit” command in Multi User Dungeons (MUDs, text-based MMOs ) which used to be simply “Q” however users found it to be too close to the “W” key which meant West and was also used as a directional pad. Nowadays you can often find QQ related to “crying,” “whining,” or making fun of somebody. It is also known that QQ represents “crying eyes” in such that depressed people need to “QQ” or quit crying.

While I’m not sure how much of this is true, QQing is an ever popular term used in online gaming such as the highly popular World of Warcraft. This may also be passed down from the original Warcraft games where pressing ALT+Q+Q would immediately close your session and your computer game (Battle.net).

Either way, I think it’s very interesting how our lives have become one acronym after another. It has really become a language of its own. And if you don’t like it — QQ.