Humor Web Humor What Is LMGTFY and Should You Use It? Use this snarky acronym with any fact-seeking friend Print Web Humor Memes Holiday Humor By Elise Moreau Elise Moreau BCom. in Business and Information Technology, University of Ontario Post-Graduate Diploma, Small Business Entrepreneurship, George Brown College Elise Moreau is a writer that has covered social media, messaging, and streaming. Her work has appeared on Techvibes, SlashGear, Lifehack, and others. Learn about our Editorial Process Updated on 02/26/20 LMGTFY is one of those longer acronyms that stands for: Let me Google that for you. It's something you can say to pretty much anyone who asks you a question that they could've easily used Google to find the most accurate and informative answer. In fact, there's an actual website that exists at LMGTFY.com where you can see this acronym's purpose put into action. What it does is it creates a short animation of any Google query you want, which you can then send to anyone who asked you the corresponding question. Oleksiy Maksymenko / Getty Images How LMGTFY Is Typically Used Let's look at an example to see exactly how a person might use LMGTFY. Say you post a photo on Facebook of a really adorable St. Bernard puppy you're thinking of adding to your family. You'll probably get a lot of likes and comments saying, "aww." And maybe you'll get an interested friend who wants to know more about the particular breed of dog. She may ask something like, "how much do St. Bernards eat?" This is the perfect type of question for LMGTFY because it's based on facts. As long as it's not a personal question that can only be answered according to your own experiences or opinions, then it will work with LMGTFY. All you have to do is copy the question, head over to LMGTFY.com, paste the question in the Google search field and hit search. Almost immediately, you'll see a field pop up at the bottom with a shortened link inside of it. If you click on "preview" below it, you'll be shown the short animation of what it looks like to Google search that exact question along with its search results. (Make sure you right-click to view it in a new tab or window so you can go back and grab the link.) Copy the link, go back to Facebook and paste it as a reply comment to the person who originally asked the question. You can optionally add the acronym "LMGTFY" before the link if you want. From there, your curious friend will click on the link and be shown a demonstration of how to Google their question. It's as simple as that! But Why Would You Want to Send Them Such a Thing? So now you may be wondering why on earth you'd ever want to send a link like this to someone. Surely they already know how to do a Google search! But that's exactly the point. It's a sarcastic way to give a response to a question that can be Googled. It's used entirely for humor. Keep in mind that while some people may see the obvious joke behind it, others may not. If your 90-year-old grandmother is on Facebook and asks you a question she could've easily Googled, you may not want to send her an LMGTFY response. Same goes for anyone else who you don't know all that well or who isn't very web savvy. LMGTFY has an iPhone app that lets you sarcastically show people how to Google their own questions even when you're interacting on a mobile device. There's also LMGTFY Generator and LMGTFY By JK for Android devices. Whether you think the site is absolutely hilarious or completely pointless, you have to admit it's kind of a clever idea built on a big yet subtle trend. It just goes to show how much we really rely on search engines like Google nowadays to answer all our most pressing questions.