Do you know what I love? I love NSFW. The phrase. The first time I saw it, no one told me what it meant, but I figured it out immediately. And I have a theory that this experience is common.
Okay, here’s the scenario. You’re at work, you’re surfing the web, you see a link for, say, "Adult Engrish." It’s ambiguous. Adult could mean developmentally mature or it could mean naughty. You look around you and wonder, Is this link safe for work? And then you see a note next to the link: NSFW. Gotcha. I’ll look at it later.
Now there is even a website to streamline the process of sending NSFW links to friends.
What I love about NSFW is what it implies about the work experience and human nature. We all waste time at work. And if you’re sitting at a desk using a computer with broadband for eight hours a day, your cursor will wander. The internet invites diversion (and subversion.) Whether it’s during lunch hour or before a big deadline, it happens. So NSFW acknowledges the common tendency and answers your question as soon as you ask it. It is a silent wink. You are part of a community–we get you and we are looking out for you.
I am not overstating my point when I say that NSFW makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
P.S. NSFW can also be deviously excluded for the viral spread of WMDs like these.
Update: Solitaire is always NSFW if you work for the state of North Carolina. Senator Austin Allran has sponsored a bill that would require the state to erase solitaire from all its computers.
The Christian Science Monitor puts an Orwellian spin on the bill:
"It goes straight to the issue of distractions from long days at the office and, more fundamentally, how much of their employees’ time and concentration employers can reasonably expect to own."
Right on! Um, actually, if you’re paid by the hour, they could expect to own all of it… And maybe a little Big Bro would do us all some good. One study by the IRS revealed that IRS employees spent more than half their time cruising the internet for personal reasons.
But of course such freedom is brought to you, in part, by the letters N, S, F, and W.
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