- What started as a complaint and turned into a joke, turned out to be the perfect solution to a problem that we have been dealing with for a long time on the internet.
- The origin of NSFW is quite strange and unique, it dates back to 1998 on the Snopes forum.
It is a strange and versatile internet acronym that was appearing more and more in different articles and social networks. But what does NSFW stand for , where does it come from and how should I use it ? It is what we are going to talk about in this article..
What does NSFW mean: Not safe for work
The acronym NSWF basically means " Not safe for work ." When used properly, it would be a kind of warning that indicates that a link to a website or any kind of files contains inappropriate content. The word is generally associated with explicit adult content; but on many occasions it is used to warn about something else of content: violence, political charge, offensive, etc.
Despite having and being used in its literal sense (not safe for work), the acronym NSFW can be used to avoid any kind of content that is not suitable, for us and for our children. It is possible to see it anywhere, a YouTube video, the title of an article, email, etc..
On many occasions it can be used to indicate that content can make us feel uncomfortable. In many situations, NSFW is accompanied by a "Trigger Word" or a "TW" tag. For example, a video that has very strong images about the war will be labeled "NSFW TW: War or Guerra".
NSFW etymology
Before, avoiding inappropriate content used to be relatively easy. Many movies are rated R; video games also have their own rating, etc..
The problem is that in the age of the internet, where anyone can create content and we can find anything, people don't feel the need to flag their content or websites as inappropriate. Generally, these people post such content on websites where it is deemed appropriate.
Thinking about it another way, "NSWF" could be that warning we saw on television " This program contains scenes that may offend some viewers ." Although it is now used for this kind of thing, in reality the origin of the word was born to solve a more specific problem.
As reported by VICE , the word NSFW is derived from the culture of the well-known forum Snopes.com. In 1998, a woman visited the forum to complain that users had to tag her inappropriate posts as "NFBSK" which would be in Spanish something like "Not for British scalers."
This complaint ended up becoming a kind of internal forum meme. I generated so much, that even Snopes made the decision to create an NFBSK forum. Therefore, it began to solve a problem, became popular as a joke, and ended up tackling a serious problem that other words could not describe in time.
Little by little NFBSK made its way onto the internet, started as a simple joke and is now widely used in forums and chat rooms. It was even simplified to "NSFW" and is in Webster's dictionary .