I’ve squandered my time on this Earth in workplaces awash with acronyms and can say without pause that acronyms in the non-infrastructure civilian world provide negative value.
When you don’t say the words they stop having meaning. This is fine when you are in the military and everyone is trained up and kept sharp because that is the job so acronyms (and abbreviations) are valuable. SITREP instead of situation report; COM instead of command, etc.
This is largely true in civilian infrastructure, where the skill level is high and the workforce is small, so again, it saves time because everyone knows what you’re talking about. OC-3 instead of “Optical Carrier with a capacity of (3 x 51.84 Mbit/s)”, etc.
I suppose that in certain medical and laboratory settings this is also true.
Acronyms as specialized jargon that saves time without compromising understanding are intrinsically a good thing.
But in most corporate, academic, or government settings acronyms (and abbreviations) become symbolized and the actual meaning of the words is abstracted away until no one actually know what they mean. TPS reports are just TPS reports — no one knows what “TPS” means and that is half of why the joke works. The other half is that we all have a TPS report in our lives.
This was bad when it was just part of the office landscape, but when it leapt into the political realm it got worse. Symbolizing acronyms, abbreviations, and words so that you can weaponize them is a classic bully tactic; it works, is friendly to both memes and bloviating talking heads, and it sucks.
DEI, BLM, woke — these were stolen and weaponized, but they were able to be stolen and weaponized because the meaning they represent wasn’t part of a shared culture or expertise. They should never have been symbolic representations for what they represent.
Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion.
Black Lives Matter.
Stay aware and informed, question the status quo and the dominant paradigm, beware of the dangers to you in a country that is dangerous to you for no reason other than your skin, your sex, your beliefs, your God, or your unwillingness to comply.
Acronyms that hide meaning and compromise understanding are bombs you hold for those who call you “enemy”.