YOYOW is a storied example of Internet

slang Slang is vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in spoken conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of particular in-gro ...

, an acronym for a phrase coined by

Stewart Brand Stewart Brand (born December 14, 1938) is an American writer, best known as editor of the ''Whole Earth Catalog''. He founded a number of organizations, including The WELL, the Global Business Network, and the Long Now Foundation. He is the auth ...

when he launched

The WELL The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, normally shortened to The WELL, was launched in 1985. It is one of the oldest continuously operating virtual communities. By 1993 it had 7,000 members, a staff of 12, and gross annual income of $2 million. ...

. It is short for "You Own Your Own Words." Members of The WELL have fought about the implications of the term for many years. In the book "The Well: A story of love, death and real life in the seminal online community," historian

Katie Hafner Katie Hafner (born December 5, 1957) is an American journalist and author. She is a former staff member of ''The New York Times'', and has written articles about technology, healthcare, and society, and books about the computer underground, the hi ...

quotes Brand as saying, "I was doing the usual thing of considering what could go wrong... One of the things that could go wrong would be people blaming us for things that people said on The Well. And the way I figured you get around that was to put the responsibility on the individual. It meant that you're responsible for your own words, and if you libel somebody they sue you, not us. And what that turned into was copyright insanity, where people thought that their precious words should not be copied in other contexts." Beyond The WELL, this term has also been interpreted variously over the years. In March 2007, Chris Locke used it to defend refusing to remove trolling that

Kathy Sierra Kathy Sierra (born 1957) is an American programming instructor and game developer. Education and career Sierra attended Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a major in exercise physiology and spent 10 years working in the fitness industry. She change ...

reported as threatening messages that made her afraid to leave her house, but defending removing the whole site instead. On her blog, ''Creating Passionate Users'', she denounced a pattern of intimidation. Chris Locke stated that his motivation for not removing hurtful posts was inspired by YOYOW. The WELL now has a more specific (and longer) members agreement.

References

Internet slang {{Web-stub