One Of The Most Confusing TikTok Acronyms: What Is NFS?

New TikTok users usually only have to spend a few minutes scrolling through their feeds before they come across an acronym they don’t understand.

TFW? (That feeling when.) MFW? (My face when.) NPC? (Non-playable character, meaning a person who doesn’t matter.) OOTD? (Outfit of the day.)

NFS pops up regularly, too, and it can be confusing even if you’re a younger user who’s grown up on the social media platform. Why might NFS be difficult to understand? Simply because it has multiple meanings that depend on the context of a TikTok post.

What Does NFS Mean on TikTok?

“NFS” is an acronym often used in the real world. To server technicians and computer nerds, it means “Network File System,” a protocol used to share files across different systems. To gamers, it means “Need for Speed,” an extremely popular racing game franchise.

You might see the acronym used for those purposes on TikTok, but that would be rare. NFS has several other, very different meanings when commonly used on the app.

1. New Friends Status: NFS is most often a signal that a user is looking for, or open to, making new friends on TikTok.
2. No Funny Stuff: Many people approach the app as an outlet for the humorous, snarky, outlandish, or just plain mean responses they can come up with to respond to a TikTok video. When a creator specifies NFS, it means they’re only looking for serious answers to the question(s) posed in their post.
3. Not For Sharing: This is more likely to be seen on less-public social apps and in email exchanges, but it does appear on TikTok from time to time. It identifies personal or sensitive TikTok videos that the creator doesn’t want viewers to share with others. It’s primarily used on TikTok by those with private accounts, most of whom have only a small group of followers.
4. Not For Sale: NFS attached to a product means exactly what it says. When attached to a TikTok video featuring either a content creator or another person, it’s usually meant to say that the person isn’t willing to sell out their beliefs for money, or (often ironically) that they’re not available for a “relationship.”

Trending TikTok language changes all the time, and new acronyms — or new meanings for old acronyms — appear constantly. That’s meant as a warning: there’s a good chance that between the time this article was written and the time you read it, NFS may have taken on an entirely new meaning on TikTok.