I came across the use of the term “epic fail” at failblog but I see it springing up everywhere online. Is this a new term or had I just not noticed it before? Sometimes just “fail” is used.
its been lurking around 4chan for a while.
The earliest entry for it at Urban Dictionary is over 2 years old, and it’s likely been around longer than that.
It started at least 100 years ago.
I mean, I, alone, have seen it over 9000 times.
That looks like a joke, but if so, I don’t get it.
Hmm. Epic fail.
This possibly started with World of Warcraft. The best equipment is classified as epic or legendary, so the best fails are epic (legendaries are much more rare). That’d put the term at around 4 years old.
Nah. That would be an epic flail.
It’s distinct from just plain “FAIL”, which generally means “Nice try, loser!”
[del][/b/]Get out, newfag.[/b/][/del]
It’s a reference to a statement found a lot on Wikipedia to say “a long time ago” because people are trying to be more formal. It seems to pass as accurate, but it’s woefully indescriptive (i.e. you could say Rome was a very powerful empire at least a hundred years ago, but you can say the same about the US being on the Gold Standard), hence the meme.
Regarding the OP -
I’m fairly certain it dates to at least 4 years ago, and I’m reasonably certain I saw it 6 years ago (which was around my first forum), but stuff starts blending together after a while.
Looking around I can track it to at least 2 distinct places:
City of Heroes PWNZ forum (which would date it at '04)
Engrish.com at an undetermined date (though that’s usually cited for just starting the fail meme vanilla).
[del]You’re breaking rules 1 and 2 newfag[/del]
Sorry, meme threads awaken the /b/tard lurking in all of us.
But really, 4chan (especially /b/) wouldn’t surprise me, there’s also the Astronomical Fail nowadays.
I’m always behind the times on stuff like this. I’m sure I haven’t seen it for more than a year at most, and for me it appeared out of the blue with no context whatsover.
Ed
For what it’s worth, I believe it’s an old Dungeons & Dragons game term. From there it probably migrated to computer lingo and then into the general populace.
When I read that, I realised that the name “4chan” has been bouncing around my head for some time, unconsciously. So I went and had a look.
That was scary.
That’s what I thought, too. I’m pretty sure when I began to see it starting to appear, it was usually in some tenuous reference to D&D.
It means that I have failed.
O rly?
Was Epic Fail possibly the old name for the Critical Failure (rolling a 1 on a check)? If so that could be a good origin point.
I’ve seen that picture a few times now and I hope you’ll all forgive the slight hijack, but does anyone know when and where that original photo was taken? Presumably a train derailment that…umm…epic would have made the news somewhere. Unless the whole thing was just photoshopped.
I’ve noticed that among young west-coasters, “epic” is the new hip superlative term, found wherever you’d have heard “awesome” in the 80’s or “rad” in the 90’s. Guessing in this case that it hitchhikes on the back of the “fail” meme as a comic intensifier.