Pop Goes the Culture
Shoulder pads, slap bracelets, Sinead O'Connor, streakers, sideburns, Sex and the City, string art, sea monkeys, SUVs, the Slinky. The best part about trends and passing fads (besides blackmailing your friend with the picture you have of her in that 1986 poodle perm) is the insight it can give us about our world. Sure, at the time a rat tail and listening to New Kids on the Block may have just seemed like harmless fun, but trends are more than just being able to say "Yes, I too tried the Adkins diet." And so this blog is devoted to finding all the latest trends and passing fads our culture can come up with and trying to figure out what they say about us other than at one point, we too thought the Emo look was cool.
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AprillBrandon - > Pop Goes the Culture -> Googlegangers, hobosexuals and mouse potatoes, oh my!
Googlegangers, hobosexuals and mouse potatoes, oh my!

In another example of the above 40 sect trying to stay hip with the teens and 20-somethings, a PR company has compiled a list of the new lingo us crazy kids are using today. Called the 2008 Cultural Dictionary, it was purportedly compiled by the company Cramer-Krasselt, which raked through hundreds of blogs and Web sites to find these words.

Now, having read through the list, I recognized maybe 10 of these words, which means one of two things.

1. At 26, I'm officially old and no longer hip. Or...

2. Cramer-Krasselt was so desperate to sound hip and with it, that they just randomly pulled words some 13-year-old used once in a blog.

Now, don't get me wrong. Some of these words are porntastic (see below). I just find it funny when corporate America tries to sound young by bogarting slang kids came up with.

But still, the list does show how creative and funny kids out there in cyberland can be. Some of my favorites from the list are:

Bromance: a strong heterosexual relationship between two males.

Dotcomrade: friend or acquaintance that you met online but have never met in person.

Drunkorexic: a person who starves themselves all day to offset the calories in the alcohol they consume.

Generica: features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where you go, such as strip malls and fast food places.

Googleganger: similar to that of a doppelganger, it's another person with the same name as you whose records and/or stories are mixed in with your own when you Google yourself.

Greenlashing: skeptism and backlash against decpetive and false environmental marketing.

Hobosexual: a man who cares little about his appearance, the opposite of a metrosexual.

Infosnacking: wasting time at work by surfing the Web.

Mouse potato: the on-line generation's answer to the couch potato

Porntastic: something great, but slightly edgy and racy

Retox: drinking the morning after a night out in order to hold off the effects of a hangover.

Stink-eye: euphemism for an annoyed facial expression where the face resembles one of a reaction to a bad odor (used recently in the film "Juno")

w00t: an expression of joy and excitement.

To read the entire list, click here.

Tags: 2008 Cultural Dictionary, Cramer-Krasselt, slang
posted by AprillBrandon on Monday, June 2, 2008 at 11:32 AM
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posted by Riverboat on Jun 3, 2008 at 12:53 AM

Does that make me a dotadmirer? Don't defriend me! As often as we compunicate, I assure you I'm not a hobosexual. I'm more like Felix's yin to Oscar's yawn.

posted by AprillBrandon on Jun 2, 2008 at 02:05 PM

Does anyone remember when the media finally caught on that the grunge movement was huge back in the 90s and they kept asking all these Gen Xers for slang words? They published all these stories, even "grunge" dictionaries, and it turns out that the kids just made the words up to make the media look stupid.

Now, even though I am a member of the media, I still find that hilarious. Fo-Shizzle. :)

posted by cleric on Jun 2, 2008 at 01:57 PM
Wow... after reading some of them I realized it was the second reason you recognized so few words.  I have seen the "stink-eye" used in the movie 'The New Guy' and I use "w00t" quite often.  In fact I have it as an autotext in my Blackberry Curve to save some button presses.

Oh well, I will add the reason stuff like this is compiled to the list of things I do not understand.
posted by pilot on Jun 2, 2008 at 01:48 PM
hA! Some of 'em hit the nail on the head........a couple of 'em (okay maybe more) pegged me. Retox.....hmmmm. I thought that was instinctive, like how a cat always lands on it's feet. When I was young, it was just "hair of the dog that bit you" :-) good post Dotcomrade!
posted by Dejasmom on Jun 2, 2008 at 01:13 PM

Ah yes, I always love it when these lists come out. Most of the time I just shake my head and think by the time most people catch on and start using these words correctly, the kids will have moved on to other words [sorta how I still hear people channeling their inner Snoop Dogg from 6 years ago by putting "izzle" after everything]. I've loved porntastic for over a year now, but never use it because the few times I've tried, the looks I've gotten range from wonder to flat-out horror.

Oh, and here's a reference just for you, Aprill: JD and Turk have the penultimate bromance, don't they?

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