The secrets of Acronym Frenzy

Episode 51 - Acronym Frenzy came out 4 weeks ago and it was a big mess of an episode to many of you. I referred to everything through acronyms, and made it partially or even completely ununderstandable. That was on purpose. Sometimes I have this tendency to make jokes in form of puzzles: only when you solve the puzzle will you get the joke. However, unlike Can I Have... A Moldovan Joke, also a very puzzly episode, where I merely wanted to get back at British stand-up comedians who make jokes about people only British people know, this time I wanted to share my experience with you, to make you feel what I felt. And going to a new job, starting going to meetings about stuff I didn't know about and listening to all those acronyms made me feel exactly like you felt when you listened to Acronym Frenzy - like I didn't understand any of it. I have to warn you at this point, if you haven't listened to Acronym Frenzy yet, listen to it now and then come back to this post, I would like you to have that experience as well.

Having said that, the acronyms used in Acronym Frenzy were not chosen at random. And you probably recognized some of them, like WTF or LOL. The idea was that once you recognized the acronyms, some of the hidden jokes would become apparent. But I guess it's probably harder for you to recognize every acronym, after all you don't have the whole thing written like I do. So I'm going to help you and unveil all the acronyms and secrets of Acronym Frenzy.

• CHLT is the first and main acronym. It's the think that the company produces. The fact that I called Dr. Joanna Ryman from the An Inconvenient Truth episode is a hint: CHLT means CHocoLaTe.
• Apart from CHLT, the first acronyms are actually not recognizable, at all. That's because they're not only acronyms, they're anagrams. Remember, I wanted you to have the experience of not understanding anything of what I said, so I can't blame you for not laughing at this part. I said that CHLT was produced by combining CAC and LKM: this were anagrams for CCA, CoCoA, and MLK, MiLK. A bit later, we add a bit of RGS - that stands for SGR, SuGaR.
• The two methods were also anagrams. The new method used the GMIC process, standing for MGIC, MaGIC, while the old method used the CNCS process, which backwards is SCNC, SCieNCe.
• The rest of the acronyms are not anagrams, although some of them can still be confusing, because they're not acronyms in the sense of having one letter for each word, they are words spelled as acronyms, with maybe one or two vowels removed. At some point you raise the temperature to reduce the amount of WTR - that's WaTeR. When you add the sugar you also add a bit of LCK - LuCK, and the intermediate product is called CRAP - that's not an acronym, that's really crap.
• At some point, though, you might start to recognize one or two acronyms. My company is a multinational, and sometimes meetings include conference calls from various parts of the world. Each one from their own department. So I'll run the departments one by one:
• Joanna's department is EBM, which is a reference to Even Better Maniacs from the Dave the Improvmaniac episode.
• James calls from the WTF department, that's the department that has some reservations about the process. WTF is a known acronym that stands for What The Fuck?
• The SNES machine (which I'll explain later) is built by the IDK department, meaning I Don't Know.
• After James, Nick asks where he can find all the documentation. Nick is from the TMI department, meaning Too Much Information.
• Finally Tom calls and he's amazed by the whole discovery, he calls from the OMFG department, standing for Oh My Fucking God.
• The machine built to produce chocolate is a state of the art SNES machine. SNES is actually the name of a Nintendo console, it stands for Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The software it runs is SMB, meaning Super Mario Brothers.
• At some point there is a talk about some "bad" and "good" proteins. The acronyms are a bit tricky here. The bad proteins are called high MYM and the good proteins are called low TR. The trick is that the High and Low are part of the acronym, Hi-MYM stands for How I Met Your Mother, while Lo-TR stands for Lord Of The Rings.
• The price of chocolate is in RPGs. It could stand for some currency conversion (Rupees Per Gold, maybe?), but RPG is a very common acronym among gamers, it stands for Role Playing Game.
• James refers that the new process releases LOL - Laughing Out Loud - and ROFL - Rolling Over the Floor Laughing - particles, provoking dementia. Joanna replies saying that the machine has an STFU - Shut The Fuck Up - component, completely eliminating all the LOL and ROFL. The residual amount is less than 0.1 PITA - Pain In The Ass.
• Finally, the documentation. Like in my company, documentation is stored in a bunch of different systems: in the episode's case the drafts are in the MIA system - acronym for Missing In Action, the user protocols are in RTFM - Read The Fucking Manual, the detailed specs are in TLDR - Too Long; Didn't Read, and the software code is in the BSOD system - Blue Screen Of Death, which is what you see when Windows crashes.
• I saved the best for last, the largest acronym (and the one I took more takes to spell correctly) is LMGTFY. You don't know what LMGTFY is? Just google for it.

There is just one more secret about this episode, but I'm just going to give a hint for it. This episode doesn't actually take place in this world, but rather in a fantasy setting from a well known series. Can you find out which one?

So, now that you know all the acronyms, I invite you to listen to the episode again. Maybe you'll find it funny this time? Well, if you still don't, at least you will start to understand it a bit, which is what I'm doing now at my new company.

That's it for me, see you next week!