Where did the "Bro" stuff come from?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Recently I saw a published string of controversial customer-service emails from a marketer who was reportedly rude to his customer. The customer in revenge published them on a website to expose the behavior.

The marketer used ‘bro’ (or ‘brah’) style language and comments on the internet mentioned it as being connectetd to steroid use and prickly-style hair dos.

Ok, what is this about? What is this ‘bro’ culture? I seem to remember it being connected to New Jersey somehow, but is that were it started? Why? How?

2

Bro on Urban Dictionary. I think Definition 2.2 is the most accurate.

10 is also pretty accurate. However, it associates the bro culture with colleges, which is not necessarily the case. Not all bros are in college.

Someone will doubtlessly be along soon to tell us that these subcultures do not exist at all, we’re just imagining them, and that you can’t generalize about people, and everyone is different, and we’re being jerks, and my best friend is a bro, etc etc.

3

A bro likes drinking beer with bros around a beach campfire, and will pull out his acoustic guitar if ladies are present. A bro loves going to the lake. A bro wears his baseball cap backward. Bros dig ringer t-shirts. A bro fancies himself a grill master, and will not hesitate to tell you so.

4

The term ‘bro’ has been around for a while. It just shorthand for ‘brother’ as in not a real one but a buddy. I don’t know much about this new use of the word and I don’t approve. We kept it real back in the day and just used the term at its most fundamental level with no complex implied meaning. It was just like, 'Pass me a brew bro" and that was that. Kids these days are idiots.

5

A bro’s acoustic guitar playlist always consists of: “Over the Hills and Far Away” by Led Zeppelin, “Let’s Get Drunk and Screw” by Jimmy Buffet (only if ladies are present), “Smile” by Uncle Kracker, anything by Kenny Chesney. A bro loves his dog, most likely a Golden Retriever, yellow lab or fat pug, and brings the pooch to the lake every weekend in the summer. A bro names his dogs after things he loves: Porkchop, Reagan, Duke, or his favorite college football coach (i.e. Bo or Woody).

6

Curiously enough, in my family the term ‘bro’ was a codeword. If you said ‘bro’ to your brother, he knew that everything you were saying was a complete lie, as in:

“Bro, I want you to meet my close friend Tom. He’s a really decent guy you can trust with your life”.

7

A bro puts a bandana on his dog. A bro is never afraid to express his dedication and/or love for his bros.

8

Don’t forget the memes:

U mad bro? (or “umadbro?”)

Cool story, bro.

Don’t tase me, bro!

9

Important and relevant documentary on Bro Rape here.

10

My first encounter with bro-culture and bromance was in online gaming. I don’t know where it originated, though.

11

I live in Chicago and I hear African American’s use “Bro” but not the “brah” version of the word.

12

The “bro stuff” you are describing sounds basically like typical white upper middle class preppy jock/fraternity alpha male youth subculture.

It shouldn’t be confused with The Jersey Shore. That’s NJ Guido culture. Although bros may adopt many of the Jersey Shore affectations as a form of irony or homage.

The major distinction is that preppy jock fraternity culture doesn’t change appreciably over the years. Argent Towers’s link might have described me and my friends 15 years ago when we were in college. My girlfriend and I went to a DMB / OAR concert this past year and the people there looked like they came through a time warp. Same baseball hats and North Face vests and A&F shirts people have been wearing for 20 years.

It’s not about being “edgie” (like hipsters) or drawing attention (like Guidos). It’s about being just like everyone else. I can go out any weekend in Hoboken, NJ or Murray Hill in Manhattan and watch packs of 5-6 dudes stuble into any post-college bar. They will get drunk, clumsily hit on girls until they find some former cheerleader or sorority chick who is drunk / self conscious enough to sleep with them.

Of course they exist. Given the choice, people will choose to be exactly like everyone else they know.

13

I think we can just cut and paste this into a submission for the Oxford English Dictionary. msmith537 lays it out nicely as always. I have no idea what other people are referring to. It is exactly as he described.

14

For some reason I always associated it with surfer culture but I live way, way inland so my knowledge of surfer lore may be limited.

15

Speaking as an occasional Big Island resident, I always thought “brah” was Hawaiian. There are plenty of hits if you Google “Hawaiian talk brah.”

16

I used to work with a “bro”, and he fits description #10 in Argent’s post to a T.

He attended Dartmouth.

He was very intelligent but also very much into drinking, hanging out at clubs, and talking about girls.

He was not a pretty boy and tended towards the dishelved side, but he wore name-brand clothing and didn’t seem to be the type who’d go shopping at a thrift store or Target.

He wasn’t inarticulate. As I said, he was very smart and I could tell he had learned a lot in school. But “bro” was his go-to word, especially when he was very emphatic about something. I think he used it mainly for comic effect. Not in an self-mocking sense, but he knew it would make whatever he said funnier. The other male coworkers began to adopt the habit, even though they were not “bro” guys.

17

There are “bros” like they have been described in this thread, but the way the word is being used in this case is as a condescending taunt. “Hey pal, mind not talking on your phone so loud?” “Nice parking job, buddy” Now it’s popular to say “bro” instead.

18

I always thought it came of of frat culture, at least that’s who I picture when I read brah or bro.

19

Ironically, in my neck of the woods. The lower class (white trash) use the entire word “Brother” when talking to a close friend.

But yeah. I use “Brother” all the time. And I can’t throw a ball to save my life. So, there’s that.

20

I think of the larger classification “douchebag” as incorporating fratboys/bros, hipsters, and guidos.