What does... "IRL" actually mean?
Benno Maggi explains in his column "What does... actually mean?" terms from the marketing and communications sector. This time he explains the abbreviation "IRL".
No, IRL is not the international country code of Ireland. The acronym stands for "In Real Life". And yet both interpretations have more in common than might be assumed at first glance.
IRL has long been slang in the gaming world and made it into the Oxford English Dictionary over 20 years ago. Now the term has made it into the corporate world as well. The reason for this, as for almost everything that has changed in the last three years, is the pandemic.
From gaming to marketing
The virus had triggered roughly the same exodus in the offices as a fungus in the mid-19th century that caused potatoes to rot in the fields in Ireland. At that time, an estimated one million Irish people starved to death, and up to five million emigrated in the following years. During the pandemic, we were also forced to leave our offices. And thoroughly enjoyed it - many (75 percent of those surveyed, according to Swiss polls) have stayed the same, at least in part, to this day. Like the Irish overseas.
Abandoned office spaces and boardrooms also resemble the empty fields and yards of Ireland of yesteryear, just as the crowded screens in video calls resemble the images from the ships headed overseas. But no one has starved to death because of the pandemic. Starved, at most, by real encounters and emotions in the home office.
But we should not whine. Unlike the Irish who emigrated back then, today we have a choice of where we want to be and when. We can meet in the old world or the new. IRL, that is, or online. So, especially in our industry, it has become common to ask: Online or IRL. It seems we need this demarcation from "Real Life" to "Virtual Life". And this is by far not only meant locally, because besides the "where" it is also always about the "how". It's about proximity, body language and emotions - in short, about the real experience.
So when someone wants to show his or her skills IRL or asks for a meeting IRL, it's more than just about location. Think of who has migrated to the home office!
