spodgod

Made-up statistics suggest that 43% of all Internet communication is the simple recitation and repetition of catchphrases, script snippets and sketches from popular TV programmes.  I’m not taking about random usage either – there are specific scenes, phrases, words and even syntactical structures that attain totemic significance.  See my previous entry “Banned Phrases of 2008” for examples.
 
If you were to peruse the archives of this blog – you would soon discover that I am both irked and fascinated by this phenomenon.  On the one hand, the process of memetic saturation and subsequent loss of meaning is a perfect model of post-modernity.  On the other, the presumption on the part of the poster that the simple cut and paste repetition of iconic phrases is automatically hilarious make me want to use IP location tools to track them down, squirt butane on their pets and set them alight.

 The latest manifestation I’ve noticed is this:

1. Do X
2. ???
3. Profit!

A quick Google reveals that this is a quotation from an episode of South Park called “Gnomes”, in which the titular characters steal underpants for profit.  At one point their business plan is revealed to be:

1. Steal underpants
2. ?
3. Profit

In its original context, I’m sure this was hilarious.   I wouldn’t know as I haven’t watched South Park since about 2003. However, when you’ve seen the same thing 132 times in one morning scattered across various Digg, Slashdot and LiveJournal threads, that initial jocularity wears off.  Also, note the increased number of question marks and the addition of an exclamation point in the ersatz version.  As everyone knows, extra punctuation makes everything funnier – if you’re a twat.

Why does this happen?  My hypothesis is that the appropriation of catch phrases from popular culture is more than just a simple substitute for invention.  Children in playgrounds the world over repeat and re-enact their favourite bits from the shows they watched the night before.  Adults in British pubs parrot Peter Kay’s stand up act, finding the words “garlic bread” unnaturally hilarious when three pints south of sober.

These are both acts of cultural bonding – looking for common experience and values in their peers.  And while the Internet equivalent is partially marked by social ineptitude, it is similarly born of a desire to belong – to be part of a group.  In other words:

1.  Repeat comedic phrase made popular on TV or YouTube
2. ?
3. Profit

Remember my super previous posting “Banned Phrases of 2007″.  Well this is exactly the same, but for 2008.  DO YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE?  By the way, what I just said?  That’s one of them… These are now all officially old news…

“Fail.” 

“I think I just threw up a little bit in my mouth.”  (EDIT: Also, the related but so far not quite as much used “I laughed so hard a little bit of wee came out.”)

“Anything-tard (examples “webtard”, “freetard”, “douchetard” etc)

“Im in ur (x) (doing y) to ur (z)”.

“The cake is a lie”. (or any quote from “Portal” – especially those quoting the lyrics of the song at the end ;”This was a triumph! I’m making a note here… Huge Success!” etc)

“I drink your milkshake.” (A phrase that has, in its overusage, put me off seeing a movie that I would have otherwise crawled over broken dinosaur teeth to see).

“I call shenanigans/BS.”

“Pwned.”

/ The use of slashes to punctuate.
// Like this.
/// Popular with Farkers, don’t you know.

“Video or it didn’t happen.”

Please feel free to dispute my choices or offer your own.

Ladies and gentlemen, I am a geek. I know this because, sometimes, I visit web forums where people discuss the metaphysics of Doctor Who and the minutiae of Star Trek warp technology. And I actually read them.

While hanging out at these murky dens of pedantry the not-a-geek side of me has picked up on a disturbing linguistic trend; the denigration of the word “rape”.

The earliest example appears to come from 1996, following the CGI enhancement of the first Star Wars movies. It can even be attributed to a specific person – Mark A. Altman, former editor of Sci-Fi Universe magazine and the guy who wrote and directed the cult nerd movie “Free Enterprise”. In an LA Times interview about the revamped Lucas trilogy Altman said “For those who grew up on Star Wars – a really seminal film for a lot of us – it’s kind of a shock to see it butchered. It’s like watching your childhood being raped.”

This hyperbolic declaration was widely reported at the time, attracting the notoriety and derision it deserved.

But, TV fans are mimics. They adopt the argot of their heroes, peppering their speech and writing with catchphrases and imitative syntax. Following the release of The Phantom Menace in 1999, fans published a petition asking George Lucas to step down from the franchise. It began “We hereby, the undersigned, in spirit of our raped childhood’s (sic), ask that George Lucas give over his reign as director and writer of Episode III to one Peter Jackson”.

By the 21st Century the phrase “George Lucas Raped my Childhood” was a t-shirt slogan – a post-ironic declaration of belonging to an invisible sub-culture of sci-fi geeks. What was ludicrous at first became sublime by repetition; another in-joke within a culture whose defining tropes are in-jokes and imitation.

The problem with repetition is that it reduces meaning. Try saying a familiar word over and over – after a while it loses both connotation and denotation, becoming little more than a pattern or cypher. A similiar thing happens through the common usage of a joke or phrase that may once have carried multiple levels of resonance. From hyperbole to parody to pastiche, the term “rape” has passed into common fan-boy parlance – flagging any perceived deviation from orthodoxy.

In a search on a popular Star Trek message board encompassing posts made in the last six months I found continuity errors, character digressions and scientific anomalies all described as rape. A Deep Space Nine episode featuring characters from the original series is described as “raping my childhood ™”. A hatch opening the wrong way on the Starship Enterprise is said to be “pure rape of logical design”. A poster commenting on a remake of the sit-com “Spaced” says “I must get round to seeing it before the Americans rape and pillage it”.

When Mark Altman compared the CGI revamp of Star Wars to sexual assault he was, however misguidedly, trying to evoke an exaggerated level of outrage. Through a decade of re-use, the outrage is now all used up – leaving us with a comparative definition of rape that equates it with irritation or inconvenience.

I’m sure that anyone who has experienced a rape will have issues with that usage.

Reading this story from the Daily Star via DigitalSpy, I wondered why I’d never noticed the unfortunate spoonerism at the heart of it before. I mean, now I’ve seen it and read it out loud – several times – it’s like it was always there, staring me in my big moon face…

“Jamie Oliver has angered Angelina Jolie by mixing up the name of her daughter Shiloh Pitt.

The chef has apologised by sending the actress a pudding made from Cheerios cereal, say reports.”

Oh. Dear.

Poor Santa Claus. Still reeling from the ignominy of having Christmas lights renamed “Winter decorations” in some UK towns last year, the gravitationally challenged present deliverer has been instructed to ditch his trademark laugh. Santas in Sydney, Australia now have to say “ha, ha, ha” instead of “ho, ho, ho”… because “ho” is black American street slang for “prostitute”, as every Antipodean five year old surely knows.

One Santa described as “disgruntled” said he’d been told not to use the term because it might “frighten children”.

We quite agree. What child wants to be placed on the knee of a strange old man who repeatedly calls them a whore, then gives them a lollipop?

Link

2,091 web users, polled by British research body YouGov, were asked to cite the Internet generated words and phrases that bug them…

1. Folksonomy
2. Blogosphere
3. Blog
4. Netiquette
5. Blook (a book based on a blog)
6. Webinar (a web based seminar)
7. Vlog
8. Social networking
9. Cookie
Joint 10. Wiki, Podcast, Avatar, User-generated content

While there are a couple of irritating terms in this list, like “blook” and “folksonomy” – I’m having a tough time getting my noggin around some of the other choices.  Blog, cookie and podcast are so deeply embedded in my everyday language that I have zero emotional response to them.  They’re just words.  Especially “cookie”.  That’s been around since… forever.

Then there are the phrases “social networking” and “user generated content”.  I mean, don’t they just say what they mean?  It’s not like they’ve been arbitrarily contracted to “snetworking” or “ugen content” – like the admittedly irksome entries “vlog” and “webinar”.

It’s the exclusions from the list that really surprise me though.  Where is “pwnd”?  What about the ironic use of “teh”?

What would you put in your list?

I’m trying to work out the etymology of two phrases that seem to have become common in the blogosphere.  If anyone knows where they might come from (TV show? Specific web site? ), then I’d be grateful.  They are:

* Wow… Just, wow.

* Just saying.

And, yes, I’m completely serious…

Following my tetchy anti-Buffyism rant earlier this week, I settled down with an as yet unopened season 4 BtVS boxset, only to discover that disc four is missing. It must have disappeared into a hell dimension… I’m pretty sure I’m being punished for my heresy. Really.

Ironic much?

The following phrases and/or syntactical constructions are now officially old. Please stop using them immediately:

“Wow. Just wow”.

The word “really” used on its own for sardonic emphasis. (eg: “I think I’m going to lose my shit. Really.”)

“Bored now”.

Making adjectives into nouns. (eg: “He’s got the funny.”)

“Hello?” (When it means “What?”)

Criticism formed as a question. (eg: “Uptight much?”)

Any Buffyism, basically.

Any Chandlerism too.

Anything on drugs. (eg: “Have you heard Sergeant Pepper? It’s like The Beatles on acid!”).

Anything-apolooza. (eg: “The comments section of YouTube is out of control. It’s trollapolooza!”)

Anything-gate applied to any scandal with a whiff of conspiracy (Saddam-gate, Diana-gate etc)

“Get a refreshing beverage of your choice” (When found halfway through a technical walkthrough, eg: a guide to configuring wireless networking on Linux).

—

Please, feel free to add to this list. My curmudgeonliness has run out for one day.

There’s been something eating away at me lately – and I blame Friends.

More specifically, I blame Chandler Bing in Friends. The influence of that programme, now forever stuck in a feedback loop of re-runs, has given birth to a cookie cutter culture of identi-kit Internet personae. Key signifier: snarkiness.

Chandler Bing, you’ll remember, was the smart, sarcastic one with low self esteem. Now everyone with a couple of AS levels and a chip on their middle class shoulder has a role model to follow. The problem is that, somewhere along the way, it got bent out of shape. Chandler is funny. Snark-o-lytes are just mean. Mean in spirit. Mean in intent. Mean, nasty, crowing and mean.

Where once people displayed their erudition and intelligence using charm, wit and wordplay – now we have snark instead. Snark is part sarcasm, part sneer and it’s all fake. Being snarky is a pre-emptive “fuck you”. It’s a smear of concealer on the acne of aggression. It’s the little voice inside every academically bright, socially inept indie kid that says “I’ll show you! I will show you all!“.

Out here in virtual space, snarkiness is really easy. It has its patterns and syntax, its chants and mantras; easily reproduced, recycled and repurposed. The Internet is a petri dish of snark.

I have a theory about this. It’s very simple. In school, the people who are most disenfranchised are the nerdy folks. Your poetry geeks, your maths dorks. Physically oppressed, storing up a bunch of nasty in their heads. Set ‘em loose on the Internet though and suddenly that playing field is much less bumpy than it was before. You, yes you with the above average SAT scores and awkward gait – wanna be King of the World? Wanna kick some butt?

“I am snark”, whispers Satan in your ear, “Use my ways to make your vengeance known. We’ll settle up later, little one”.

With its illusion of anonymity, online snarkiness is an apparently victimless crime. Wheeling off cocky bon mots like some dial-up Dorothy Parker, the snark practitioner wounds with words and moves on. Tap tap, tappity tap – *ZAP*.

And you know what? I’ve been sucked into it myself. I’ve been snarky. Nay, more than snarky – I’ve been downright rude. Obnoxious, odious and ‘orrible. It’s just too easy to let the grit in your shoe bug you when there are no barriers between keyboard and screen.

Once, it was all modems and baud rates around here. Back then snark still seemed big and clever. Now? Now it’s just passe. Snark is the puffball skirt of humour – the mullet of mirth. It’s time for a backlash, for a return to showing how clever you are by actually being clever; how human you are by being humane. It’s time for us to re-learn that being funny doesn’t require a figure of fun. It’s time for a charm offensive.

No, really.

Friends, I reject the ways of snark. I renounce Chandler Bing as my role model and adopt Phoebe Buffay instead. I’m moving my Bill Hicks and Denis Leary DVDs to the back of the cupboard and rewatching Eddie Izzard. I will, once again, become a gentleman of gentle humour – as real men should be.

That is, until some MySpace dick twiddler cusses me up in Second Life. Then I’ll tear him a new arse-cavern with a selection of pointed, pithy epithets. Tap, tap, tappity tap – *ZAP*.