If it helps you feel better, I share your confusion on the multi-meaning (and thus, no meaning) of hack and meme – and others bandied about as if they meant something specific.
I’ve probably mentioned it before, but there was a guy I used to work with whose vocabulary was such that when he was at a loss for a specific word he would just use thing as the arbitrary noun and take as the verb in question. It was all the more opaque when he would “take and thing” something – or someone.
I feel that way about hack and meme and so many other nonce words and phrases. But it’s easy enough just to say fuck it!
Dude- you are hijacking this thread to debate the meaning of the word meme. * I’d rather not participate in your little hijack.* Start another thread if you must. Thanks.
Yup. The poster in question is free to keep his habit, and I’m free to never read a single one of his posts.
Who comes off the worse for it? I’ll let him decide. Maybe he doesn’t give a damn whether I read his posts. Maybe it’s like Tarkovsky putting that boring part in at the beginning of Solaris, so that all the jerks who don’t have any patience will leave the theater before the good part starts. Maybe all those posts are fantastic. Who knows?
I do notice one thing, though: A lot of the people who like *Solaris *will say that the boring bit at the beginning is their favorite part, while having no appreciation for the good stuff later. And a lot of the sort of people who would really dig the later bit have never seen the whole movie, because they bail during the boring first bit.
(BTW, I’m not trying to be an asshole to Mr. S. I don’t dislike him as a person. I don’t even know the guy, and with me never reading his posts, that is presumably how things will stay. Speaking for myself, if I’m doing something that really annoys a lot of you, I certainly want to hear about it. In fact, feel free to tell me in this thread or elsewhere. I’m sure there’s something. I have a few theories myself. Too many typos, generally sounding a lot grumpier than I’m aware of… things like that. I do try to write posts that are fun, informative and non-annoying. Sure, I fail spectacularly a lot of the time. But it’s not on purpose. So, have at it. No holds barred.)
All the friggin’ acronyms used here, and most aren’t immediately easy to figure out: WAG, AFAIK, etc. It was extremely off putting when I first joined and started lurking. Never ceases to amaze me that some of the same people who complain in a thread that kids these days use too much text speak are the same ones who have no problem tossing around the above nonsense acronyms like so much alphabet soup!
Ahem… The question of whether the poll choices were true memes arose in post #3. So you have already been participating in the clarification/hijack. just sayin’
