👉 Okay, settle in folks – let’s tackle this… rather delightfully specific piece of internet vernacular. Now, I haven't actually stumbled upon a formally documented “btn_img," frankly! It seems to be entirely of the damn near-nightmare realm of a very particular kind of web development and user interface jargon.
Basically—and here’s where we get into some wonderfully messed up territory—
“btn_img" roughly translates to, in my admittedly somewhat hysterical interpretation: 'Because it looks pretty, therefore I should probably ignore that the functionality behind it is probably a dumpster fire.
Let me unpack this for you. Originally, and of course, annoyingly, these were shortcodes thrown around by junior devs (let’s just say "spirited ones") during early-stage website builds. It started as shorthand—because who wants to actually
describe
the small, decorative image smack-dab on top of a big, clickable “Buy Now!/Sign Up!/Whatever!" button that's, frankly, probably badly implemented and will lead to nothing but user frustration.
The acronym, of course, is a ridiculous non sequitur. You see it in frantic Slack messages, old pull request histories filled with the kind of desperate abbreviations you only witness when someone’s on the verge of an existential meltdown. It's a way to say:
Okay, I know this looks good – that pretty little whatever—, but