As the Internet Age marches on, the ongoing LOLification of my native language often has me saying WTF? even though the picture of that kitten that made the cookie but eated it did have me ROTFL. Japanese Internet users love to invent slang words, too, and venturing onto the legendary BBS 2ch (pronounced ni-channel) to check out all the l33t-speak can really get confusing fast. 2-channelers love to use strange words like nin-shin (妊娠）, which usually means “pregnant” but has come to refer to Nintendo fanboys for some reason; gugure (ググれ), a morphing of Google as a Japanese verb meaning “look it up on Google, fool!”; or wwwww, which is laughing, just as zzzzz represents sleeping. Just as Japanese uses many words imported from English, some foreign-derived slang terms include kopi-pe (koh-pi-peh, meaning “copy & paste”) or su-re (soo-REH, スレ、from the Japanese pronunciation of the word “thread”). Many words embraced by internet users here are abbreviations of Japanese phrases with the vowels removed, which allows them to be input quickly even when using Japanese input software. Two examples are KTKR (short for kita-kore キタコレ, meaning “Yes, this is it, baby!”) or WKTK (wakuwaku-tekateka ワクワクテカテカ, meaning “I really can’t wait for that to happen, I’m on pins and needles”). Just as popular U.S.-based BBS 4chan has its /b/tards, 2ch has a sub-group known as the VIPPERS, who evolve even more bizarre net lingo to wrap themselves in.
