Has Straight Dope messageboard talk dropped into your real life vocabulary? Have you ever told someone who was getting on your nerves “Wanna take this to The Pit?” Has your sister ever started an arguement with “They say. . .” and you immediately jumped in with “Cite, please?”
My girlfriend recently got a home computer and has been lurking for a while. She just today told me, “That’s a completely different thread in a whole 'nother forum.”
Do you do this? And if you do, do people look at you as if you are crazy when it happens?
Well, not exactly that way, but I do find myself saying (all the time), “See, there was this note on the message board I’m part of …” , plus “Who is THEY??! Did you read this in a paper or something reputable or did you just see it in an email?”
I have been using :wally quite a bit lately. All my co-workers have been wondering why in the hell I have been using it, and where I got it. I just and say SDMB… The look on their faces is funny.
Seems that all my conversations IRL lately make me sound like that girl in American Pie. “Once, in band camp…” except I say, “Once, on the Straight Dope Message Boards…”
I find myself:
[ul]
[li]typing [ B ], [ I ] or [ U ] instead of CTRL + B or I or U for Word documents**.[/li][li]typing : eek : in an e-mail and getting mad when I don’t get the little blue face.[/li][li]also adding Hi Opal! to a list.[/li][li]looking for the “Preview Reply” button before sending a e-mail.[/li][li]inadvertantly referring to my supervisor as my “moderator” (happened only once).[/li][li]resending an e-mail and apologizing for misspelling a word.[/li][li]trying to explain to someone not on the board why “The Return of the Princess Bride Jedi” is so damned funny.[/li][/ul]
**Purposely screwing up the code here so I don’t get **bold, *italic or underline in the list
Whenever an obscure question comes up at work, I always volunteer to find the answer/solution/etc. When I come back with the answer, I always start with, “Some friends of mine did some research on this…” or “I asked a friend, who’s a biologist specializing in spider monkeys, about that…” or “My friend, who is a geneticist at Johns Hopkins, says…”. They all think I have a personal team of researchers helping me out with all our random wonderings.
Just a few days ago, a coworker and I were preparing a list of things for our boss to bring up at an upcoming meeting, and sure enough, I typed “Hi, Opal” at the third bullet. Fortunately the guy I was working with knows about the SDMB and occasionally reads threads I point him to, so it didn’t take too much explanation.
Fortunately, my IFGS friends are accustomed to strange names, so it doesn’t baffle them when I refer to someone here (in a group where names like Damnfairy Lizardking or Yan Kankuk are accepted, our screennames seem downright pedestrian).
I’m prone to saying “Cite, please” and generally apologize in advance for not having a cite. Both of these habits confuse people. I also use YMMV, IMHO, and a few other abbreviations occasionally. Fortunately, most of my friends are used to hearing me slip into hackish jargon and can glork it from the context.
during conversation:
… something really funny happened to a friend of mine… uhm… at the straight dope… yes online… no I dont know him/her in real life… well… this is what happened…
:eek: :eek: :eek:
I also almost introduced myself as “dodgy” ones… and almost screamed LOL instead of laughing.
during conversation:
… something really funny happened to a friend of mine… uhm… at the straight dope… yes online… no I dont know him/her in real life… well… this is what happened…
:eek: :eek: :eek:
I also almost introduced myself as “dodgy” once… and almost screamed LOL instead of laughing.
“Well wring said the same thing…”
“Yeah, and Zenster has this great recipie for chicken…”
“I know what you mean. peace pissed me off when…”
and people say “Who is wring/Zenster/peace/etc.?”
“Um, I don’t know, I’ve never met any of these people.”
And typing asterisks to replace letters in normal words like cncrt*, Sntn*l, et al.
Besides the plethora of information that I’ve gleaned here, the bad jokes that I’ve lifted and the use of the double-colon narrative punctuation mark (e.g.- ::pulls up a lawn chair and pops open a cold one:: ) in my e-mails, the one thing I’ve gotten from the boards (not really jargon, however) is
( * Y * )
[sub]…my thanks to the lovely and wonderful Ayesha and Byzantine for this symbol![/sub]
…not something I can use everyday, mind you, but when i can squeeze it in, it usually brings the roof down!!
I just now confused the guy in the next cube. We were talking about the kournikova virus that’s been going around (he mentioned that the guy who started it turned himself in); I said, “Yeah–the guy wasn’t exactly hiding. soulsling found his handle in the file and tracked down his home town a couple of days ago.” Then he wanted to know who (or what) a “soulsling” was.
Like C3, I’m believed to have ties to an extraordinary team of researchers (also spies and hackers). That’s just from stuff I pick up in passing.
I was in a charity board meeting a couple of weeks ago, and I referred to the person who brought up a topic as “the OP.” Which immediately led to puzzled looks and the question: “Who’s Opie?” Hamana hamana hamana ummmm . . . did I say ‘Opie’? Forced laugh, quick change of subject.
I say “do you have a cite for that?” a lot, but then it’s part of my job and predates the Board, so no credit there.
I pass on Board information by saying “this girl (or guy) I know said . . .” without specifying that it’s a girl (or guy) I’ve never actually met.
and say SDMB… The look on their faces is funny. 