asl
/eɪ.ɛs.ɛl/
RareAge / sex / location. A question asked in early chat rooms and instant messaging to learn basic info about a stranger.
Carries strong nostalgia for the era when meeting strangers online felt new and slightly dangerous. Now used almost entirely as a reference to that time period.
Real-world examples4 examples
| # | Example | What it means | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | first message in the chat room was always just 'asl?' no hello nothing | Describing how abrupt early chat room introductions were. | reddit, 2022 |
| 02 | someone typed 'asl?' at me on discord and i felt like i traveled back in time | A modern user encountered the outdated question and found it jarring. | x, 2023 |
| 03 | 16 / f / florida was basically the password to every AOL chat room in 1999 | Joking that claiming to be a teenage girl from Florida was a common answer regardless of truth. | |
| 04 | my parents were terrified of asl in the 90s. parental controls were a whole thing | Referencing the moral panic around strangers asking for personal information online. | tiktok, 2023 |
Use it when
- You are referencing or joking about early internet chat room culture.
- You are explaining how people met online in the 1990s.
Do not use it when
- You are actually trying to find out where someone lives.
- You are asking someone's age on a current platform.
Origin and context
Originated in early internet chat rooms and IRC channels in the 1990s, particularly on AOL Instant Messenger and similar platforms. The question became a standard opener for strangers meeting online before profiles or social graphs existed.
- First seen
- 1990s
- Confidence
- high
Cite this page
Use this stable URL to reference the entry.
https://slang.fyi/asl-90sUpdated: 2026-08-28License: CC BY 4.0