[handrous]

> “IANAL” is used to avoid liability for offering legal advice in settings where it’s not permitted. It’s not used to hand wave away that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

It's exactly and only the latter, actually. Consider how useful an obscure-to-normies Web-forum acronym consisting mostly of "anal" is going to be at deflecting liability—should such even be possible—if it comes up in court. Not a bit, right? So how could it be intended for that? If that were the purpose, people would write out the words.