Asklemmy

43133 readers

1802 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

Why do people call it DM? (lemmy.rollenspiel.monster)

submitted 1 year ago by 0x4E4F@lemmy.rollenspiel.monster to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

81 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I mean... I come from the forum scene and they were always called PMs, as in Private Message. What in the hell does DM stand for and when did things change from people calling them PMs to DMs.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] LiesSlander@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I suppose it's a slightly more accurate term. The messages here are not truly private since they are not encrypted, but since they are sent directly no one should read them in the normal course of using the platform. Calling them private might imply to people that other people cannot read them, rather than the reality that it is just very unlikely anyone will. I would also argue that if something is released to an authority it is not "private" even if it is not publicly available.

Honestly, it doesn't really matter which you use. People will generally understand either way, so you can go ahead and keep saying PM and others will say DM and we can all just understand that they mean the same thing.

[–] 0x4E4F@lemmy.rollenspiel.monster 1 points 1 year ago

I ran into a person the other day, I wrote "I'll PM you" and he replied "What is PM 🤨" 🤷. They may be young or just a late internet adopter, but still, that was just a sign for me that I should probably adopt the new DM lingo, as some people just don't understand what I'm talking about.