Man, I'm shocked at how often this has to be reiterated here...
"TFA" means The F[ine]* Article (or insert another 'F' word if you wish), which I first heard on Slashdot, which was perhaps the OG "news aggregator" site back in the 90's and early 2000s, to refer back to the original article which we were all discussing.
This was a back-formation from RTFA, which would have meant, "Read The F[ine] Article", an admonition / accusation not uncommon on Slashdot which is explicitly discouraged here.
RTFA, in turn, was a modification of RTFM, familiar to many of the IT crowd, as an admonition / recommendation often proffered in response to user questions: Read the F[ine] Manual.
Although RTFM was obviously fairly toxic, and RTFA was of the same spirit, TFA by itself simply filled a useful role: a way to refer back specifically to the article we were all (supposedly) discussing.
* There are other F-words sometimes used here, of course
IDK if you just wrote that all on the spot but well done, you need a blog! I knew most of those facts individually but never tied it all together into a narrative, or made the connection with Read the Freakin Manual.
To only slightly elongate this tangent: I’m giving the Reddit crowd cultural victory on this one with “OP” (for Original Post) rather than “TFA”/“TLA”. I’m curious what is typically used on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, but I’m guessing no one here knows lol
