4chan Memes, circa 1889

March 20, 2009 at 9:53 am

In the comments to this unremarkable story about 4chan’s Boxxy fad, I came across this gem from CSClark:

I don’t know why I didn’t think to see if this sort of phenomenon was covered in Extraordinary Popular Delusions… Of course, it is.

Walk where we will, we cannot help hearing from every side a phrase repeated with delight, and received with laughter, by men with hard hands and dirty faces, by saucy butcher lads and errand-boys, by loose women, by hackney coachmen, cabriolet-drivers, and idle fellows who loiter at the corners of streets. Not one utters this phrase without producing a laugh from all within hearing. It seems applicable to every circumstance, and is the universal answer to every question; in short, it is the favourite slang phrase of the day, a phrase that, while its brief season of popularity lasts, throws a dash of fun and frolicsomeness over the existence of squalid poverty and ill-requited labour, and gives them reason to laugh as well as their more fortunate fellows in a higher stage of society.

Wherein we also learn that the FAIL of the day was Quoz:

When a disputant was desirous of throwing a doubt upon the veracity of his opponent, and getting summarily rid of an argument which he could not overturn, he uttered the word Quoz, with a contemptuous curl of his lip, and an impatient shrug of his shoulders. The universal monosyllable conveyed all his meaning, and not only told his opponent that he lied, but that he erred egregiously if he thought that any one was such a nincompoop as to believe him.

I’m also sure I’ve read of a fad – Greek, Roman, 18th century, something like that – where a group of young (aristocratic?) men who would suddenly grab a common woman and proclaim her Helen and make her their queen and swear to die for her and so on. And the tearing down of such idols could be seen, if you were wont to be pretentious like me, as part of Frazer’s Golden Bough’s Sacrificial King idea, although I’m not sure script kiddies care if the crops grow. (One other problem with that is that Frazer was romancing; but so are the more literal memecists, so yah!)

Since then however, it appears that “quoz” has entirely flipped meaning, according to UrbanDictionary:

slang for quality, a cockney term for something good. usually accompanied with a hand action of slaping ur index finger against the stationary thumb and middle finger. ‘thats quoz man! propa quoz.’ finger slappy hand thingy

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Comments (4)

Linking for charidee

June 29, 2007 at 11:10 am

Tom tagged me with another blog link-meme — a worthwhile one, though; the idea is to improve the page rank of charities in Ireland, by linking to them. Fair enough!

The list of charities so far is:

And I’ll add Focus Ireland (who seem to have broken their website!). Thanks to Dorothy for the suggestion.

Who to pass it on to? How’s about Una, James and Donncha?

Tags: , , , , ,

Comments

5 things

December 20, 2006 at 3:06 pm

Tagged by richi! drat. OK, here are 5 things you probably don’t know about me:

  1. I’m a certified SCUBA diver, at PADI Advanced Open Water Diver level. (oh, look, so’s Tom Raftery!)

  2. I generally try to avoid meeting my heroes, since I get quite tongue-tied in the presence of people I admire — I once stammered “I think you’re brilliant” at Alex Paterson, instead of anything more witty or interesting.

  3. I met my wife at a student occupation in university, where her knowledge of the science and nature questions in Trivial Pursuit, and amazing looks of course, got me hooked ;)

  4. I could listen to Brian Eno’s Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy and Here Come The Warm Jets on repeat for several weeks, if necessary.

  5. I was a child model, modelling (among other things) underpants for Dunnes Stores! It’s all been downhill since then, really ;)

Passing it on: go for it, Brendan, Colm, Lisey, and Jason.

Tags: , , , , ,

Comments (2)

Four Things

February 20, 2006 at 10:37 pm

I don’t do silly blog antics much, but I got tagged by Mat for the Four Things meme. Looking around, it is indeed a bit more interesting than things like the usual LJ quiz, so why not!

I wrote this on the plane from LA to Dublin, which may have affected some of the selections in 4 places I would rather be right now at least ;)

4 jobs I’ve had:

  • I was Iona Technologies’ first employee, and stayed there for no less than 7 years. I got to see the company grow from a handful of people, most of whom weren’t getting paid (hence how I wound up as the first employee ;), all the way up to a 300-strong multinational, while the company itself formed a core of Ireland’s mini dot-com boom. That was fantastic fun, and educational to boot.

  • my Dad’s gun/fishing/sporting-goods shop. Was it really a good idea to have a teenager working near firearms? At least I wasn’t the one who unplugged the fridge where the maggots were kept, so that they all hatched over the course of one weekend…

  • A horrible teenage job — picking tomatoes. I can still feel the orange dust under my fingernails every time I smell fresh tomatoes :( I didn’t last very long at that at all.

  • writing an Amiga-based kiosk system for virtually no pay whatsoever, at the age of 18 or 19. Ah, exploitation.

4 movies I can watch over and over:

  • Koyaanisqatsi — it’s dating a little now, since every ad agency through the 90s ripped it off. But still, the invention of a new format. I remember looking at the 405 freeway in LA, and thinking “looks like something out of Koyaanisqatsi” — of course, it was.

  • Princess Mononoke — either that, or Nausicaa. I just love the way the characters are coloured in shades of grey, rather than black and white.

  • the Lord of the Rings trilogy — oh dear I’m a hopeless Tolkien fanboy.

  • Spinal Tap — pure genius.

4 places I’ve lived:

  • Melbourne, Australia; around the time of the annoying TV drama, The Secret Lives Of Us;

  • Newport Beach, CA; around the time of the annoying TV drama, The O.C.;

  • Dublin, Ireland; no annoying TV drama — so far

  • University of California Irvine, CA; while Irvine itself is the most soulless suburban hellhole I’ve ever visited, living on the UCI campus is quite fun by comparison. Take about 1000 grad students, post-docs and lecturers from around the world; put them all in the same square mile or so; remove all fun (and bars!) from the surrounding areas; watch them make their own entertainment, or go mad.

4 tv shows I love:

4 places I’ve vacationed:

  • Annapurna Base Camp, Nepal; we trekked our way up to there, then trekked back down again. Unforgettable. I really want to do another Nepal trek as a result

  • car-camping around the Australian state of Victoria; they have some fantastic national park campsites, which most tourists overlook

  • learning how to dive in Ko Tao, Thailand; great setting, great dive sites, pretty cheap too!

  • Yosemite; amazing, world-class natural beauty. Californians don’t realise just how lucky they’ve got it ;)

4 of my favourite dishes:

  • A good Thai green curry

  • Laos-style green papaya salad with sticky rice

  • a good meaty cassoulet, from Fandango in San Luis Obispo. At least, that was the tastiest meal I’ve had in recent months ;)

  • Mangosteen — the queen of fruit, according to the Thais. I could, and probably have, eaten hundreds of these

4 places I would rather be right now:

  • spending New Year’s Day with a bunch of friends in rural West Cork or County Galway; until I moved to the US, this was one of my favourite annual traditions.

  • the Stag’s Head Bar, Dublin, in the snug, again with a bunch of friends

  • sitting on the grass outside the Pavilion bar in TCD, on a sunny summer’s day (hmm, that’s a lot of bars!)

  • Chiang Mai, Thailand

4 sites I visit daily:

4 people I’m tagging:

Tags: , , , , ,

Comments (6)