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Blame ‘Sliding Into DMs’ For Killing the Beloved IM

Zara Stone
OneZero
Published in
4 min readNov 28, 2019

Illustration: Minet Kim

AAndy is a pretty easygoing guy. He likes video gaming, travel, and Buddha memes. But there’s one thing that gets him really frustrated — when people ask to “DM” or “direct message” him on social networks. “I refuse to use the term,” he says. For him, it’s “PM” (private message) or no dice. He’s angry when companies randomly change their lexicon from one to the other and just expect people to fall in line.

As social media has become a part of everyday life, so has the language around it. The problem, in this case, is that people (and social media platforms themselves) can’t seem to agree on what that language should be.

The blanket term across chat rooms and early social sites like MySpace used to be IM (instant message). PM entered the vernacular around 2003, and it was embraced by Yahoo, Facebook, and Reddit. And then DM appeared on the scene around 2013 with Twitter, Snapchat, Discord, Slack, and Instagram using the language instead of PM. It may have gotten a further boost as the phrase “slide into my DMs,” which emerged around late 2013 and initially connoted flirting and inappropriate requests.

While talk of IMs today is about as common as Nokia phones, both PM and DM prevail. In one…

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OneZero
OneZero

Published in OneZero

OneZero is a former publication from Medium about the impact of technology on people and the future. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Zara Stone
Zara Stone

Written by Zara Stone

Tech+Culture f/lance journo. www.zarastone.net Bylines: OneZero, Marker, Atlantic, Forbes, etc. Author: The Future of Science Is Female https://bit.ly/stm202

Responses (4)

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I use “PM or DM me” to cover my ass, so to speak. I was born in the 60s and used Yahoo Instant Messaging and ICQ and Internet Relay Chat then online forums and message boards. With the fast pace of communication and instant demands and personal…

A Vampire Diaries meme sums it best: “Who cares?? To be honest it’s just messages.”

Hahaha!! Love this
I grew up with the internet and PM was the accepted term back then, now with IG as a BIG SM Player, DM has become the defacto standard

I help monitor the social media channels for the tech company I work for. When communicating over Twitter, we use “DM”. On Facebook, we say “private message”.