The only thing more well known across the world is LOL, and nobody standardized that, it just came to be as the internet grew.
Is it that difficult to give brain damaged people a simple three letter acronym like FTD that’s easy to remember if they have to talk with emergency services or other doctors?
Squirrelsdrivemenuts@lemmy.world 1 day ago
But FTD is used by people to talk about frontotemporal dementia.
However, it isn’t an acronym, but an abbreviation. Abbreviations are generally not much easier to remember and even more meaningless to normal people. The reason they wouldn’t use the abbreviation in the documentary is because abbreviations are generally considered even more complex to both remember and understand than ‘long’ words. Only when a loooot of people know and talk about a disease does an abbreviation or other name become mainstream enough (thinking about flu for influenza etc) that it actually becomes useful to have the shorter name. Even at a conference about brain diseases you would only use FTD after giving the full term first so people know what you are talking about.
But yes, if Bruce goes to a clinic and says he has FTD they will know what’s up (or google the abbreviation).