I’ve only started reading/hearing it in the last 3 or 4 years… Clearly it’s equivalent to “my mistake”, but is this a new internet shorthand or an old expression? When I saw it in print, I was thinking, “Your bad what? That doesn’t make any sense!” Recently I’ve been hearing people say it on occasion.
(Incidentally, what’s wrong with “my mistake” anyway?)
When I was in 7th or 8th grade I first heard this expression from various classmates and people ahead of me. I graduated from 8th grade in June of 1995, so it can’t be less than 5 or so years old.
Don’t know how old it is for sure, but in high school we used to say “my bad” if you screwed up in sports especially. I graduated in 89, so it’s at least that old.
As for what’s wrong with “my mistake”, well, nothing. There’s nothing wrong with “how are you” but people still say “what’s up”. 
It’s been around for a little over 10 years, starting as a cutsey, feel good, semi-yuppie phrase used in corporations by ‘suits’. It came in around the time that everyone in business talked ‘Computerease,’ you know, ‘lets interface over this,’ ‘I want to network with you,’ and ‘lets start a file and boot it up and see what we have.’ (Yuck!)
Right around the time corporations started shoving execs into ‘bonding’ weekends, ‘team training retreats’, dropping the ‘suits’ and spending $500 to look casual in jeans, sandals, and pull over shirts, removing cubical walls and creating ‘creative’ space in the work areas and stuff like that.
(They just never got around to dropping the cost of their products for regular folk who used them.)
Singing off-key at top of lungs: My Mistake … I have made a terrible mistake …
I’ve always taken it to have originated as a verbal twist on “my goodness”, but there may be some origin I’m not aware of. I think it’s one of the more annoying verbal affectations to have surfaced in recent years, and I HOPE it doesn’t become ingrained.
If I can hijack this a bit, where did “da bomb” start? I think that one is dying out, and I kind of LIKE it.
I’ll second that.
“da bomb” started in California. I first started hearing this term in 1996 in the early days of Austin’s boom and a lot of Californians (and their hipper-than-thou kids) were moving in.
The NSA’s computers must hate this one!
FWIW:
I don’t think this started in California…alot of Jamaican Reggae/Dancehall d.j.'s used this phrase in the early 90’s. I think American rappers picked it up from this, and was then picked up by American kids. The first time I saw it used by an American was in the movie ‘Juice’.
I caught the tail end of a segment on the ‘Today’ show about new words that had made their way into the new dictionary. The representative told Matt that “my bad” had been around for over 15 years qualifiing it for the new edition.
Yabob:
The “My Mistake…” singing reference–“Fawlty Towers”. Am I right? Seems like I remember Manuel doing this in one episode…
I first heard it in 8th grade, back in 1983, from the Marching and Maneuvering (M&M) for my high school band.
Monty Python. One of their innumerable restuarant sketches.
My friends and I used “my bad” in the late 70’s.
So, does the SDMBer who heard/used the phrase “my bad” the earliest win a prize?
However ‘cool’ has been around since the 50s.
COOL!
Like many nifty phrases, “my bad” came from the US Military. It’s probably been around at least since the '50’s. It’s used usually as a casual way of taking the blame for something that is (a) your fault after all, and (b) nothing earth-shattering. Often used when someone of higher rank needs to make amends to someone of lower rank ex: “Oops, sorry Sargeant. My bad.” “Understood, Sir. No problem.”
Man, I’m just a font of obscure knowledge tonight…
Like “fubar” and “snafu”? Does “my bad” stand for something colorful like “Mistake? You’ve Been A Dipshit”
I’m with Mr. Blue Sky. We were using the expression “my bad” back in high school in the mid 70’s. I always thought it was gheto-speak.
I’ve only recently heard this in the last few months by an engineer I work with. It sounds so stupid! “I’m bad” would make more sense. I guess if it’s been around so long I must live an extremely sheltered life.
Was the expression popularized by South Park (TV and movie), perhaps? It was said twice in the movie. I never heard it before then.