Dude.

So, over at Questionable Content creator's Jeph Jacques livejournal, which I periodically peruse, I found this comic. If you're too lazy to click, the important part is this statement: "Stop using 'win' and 'fail' as complete sentences."

The post's a month old, so rather than post a comment there, I'm just gonna put it here, where no one will see it.

I can't really understand the animosity towards this practice. People have been using one-word reactions to things since long before the internet. Back in the Jurassic era when I was a kid, it was things like "cool" and "awesome" (and "tubular", but I'd like to forget about that one). Or, of course, the all-purpose "dude", which, depending on tone, can convey a myriad of reactions. There's even a precursor to "pwned" from pre-internet days: "burned".

Sure, it gets annoying when the only thing someone seems to be able to say is "LOL" (or, more likely, "lol", because the shift key is apparently only for SHOUTING these days), and I want to smack each and every person on the internet who uses it as punctuation (lol i guess lol *smack*). But "win" and "fail" aren't trying to convey anything more than an instant reaction to something, so why should it be any longer than that one word?