Five words I’d like to never hear again…and one I love
Mommy Blogger – I wouldn’t have any problem with this term if it was purely descriptive. I am a mommy who is a blogger. A mommy blogger. But almost never in the history of mommy blogging has someone said it without the undertone of snide disdain as if writing on the internet about your kids is somehow less deserving of respect than writing on the internet about your dog or cooking or celebrities or fashion. Newspapers use the term to imply the entire genre is moms blogging about potty training and visits to the farm who will stoop to anything for freebies and sponsors and a new vacuum cleaner. (One article in particular springs to mind.) If that’s all “mommy blogger” means these days, we need a new term for the eight zillion mom blogs that DON’T fit the category.
Lactivist – A couple weeks ago a friend Tweeted a link with a comment to the effect that she thought her “lactivist friends” should check out. I am 99.9% sure all she meant by that statement was “this article is about a breastfeeding advocate and thus those of you who also breastfeed would probably find it interesting”. Of course, that’s way too long for Twitter, so lactivist was good shorthand. Unfortunately, I broke the First Rule of the Interwebs (NEVER READ THE COMMENTS) and read the comments, where the word lactivist was equated to “breastfeeding Nazi” “judgmental” and “moms who should mind their own business”. I fear “lactivist” is falling into the same pattern as “feminist” where even those who actually ARE lactivists are hesitant to use the word for themselves, simply because of the negative connotation. Until lactivist can be reclaimed, I’d rather use “breastfeeding supporter” or even just “mom who breastfed and can offer you advice if you want it.”
Awesomesauce – No offense Twitter, it’s just a stupid word. It may have been clever the first five (hundred) times but now it’s annoying. As is all other kinds of -sauce: coolsauce, lamesauce, niftysauce, awfulsauce. The only kind of sauce I want to hear about is a nice Bearnaise sauce for my eggs or a spicy red clam sauce for my pasta. Mmmmmm….sauce. See, this is what happens with food slang and pregnant women.
Tar-jay – Dude, it’s called TARGET. Their logo is a giant TARGET. They’re headquartered in Minneapolis, which may be as far away from France as you can get. If you need to change the name to make it sound fancy a more accurate accent would be the Swedish Chef, which is actually less fancy than just saying TARGET.
FML – It stands for “f*ck my life” and is usually used in such awful circumstances as “I’m out of organic Greek yogurt for breakfast! FML!” and “My kid ripped up my Vogue magazine! FML!” and “I lost a ton of weight on this all-chocolate and wine diet and none of my clothes fit! FML!” PERSPECTIVE, PEOPLE!! Even when you have a flat tire or the baby cries all night or your job sucks it’s not really worth such a dramatic statement. I may be turning into my mother, but every time I see FML I feel like saying “There are starving children in Africa who would kill for your life and your non-organic yogurt!”
And the one I love…
Douche-canoe – Copyright The Bloggess (as far as I know – maybe SHE’S the douche-canoe and totally stole it from someone else). Accurately describes everyone from the guy driving 55 in the left lane to the idiot on the internet who says stuff like “I would NEVER feed my kid Goldfish crackers, we only eat bread made from wheat we grow and grind ourselves” to your second cousin’s brother-in-law who makes unnecessary inflammatory political comments during family dinners. Douche-canoe.
Tags: blogging, internet, things I hate, things I love, twitter
I will say I love the term “weak-sauce.” And I’ve adopted douche canoe because it’s totally awesome.
um, i think i love absolutely everything about this post! hilarious! douche-canoe, huh? i might have to work that one in this weekend and see if jeremy notices it!
I do not know this Blogess you speak of but I have heard douche-canoe used for about a decade now.
I totally agree and give this post two thumbs up and a “FTW!” ;) LOVE the term douche-canoe, by the way. It’s one of my favorites.
I only use Tar-jay because my mom and I picked it up to mock the snobby, snobby people who like to pretend that they don’t shop at a discount department store. But they totally do. So we call it that to be ironic or silly.
And I agree on the FML epidemic. You woke up this morning–your life is awesome.
You are hilarious. This post is awesome and I learned a lot of new slang! But, um, I still don’t know what FTW means.
It commonly means “for the win,” however existed before that as an acronym for “fuck the what” and that is the one that has lodged in my head and I always have to translate “ftw -> fuck the what -> no no no for the win.”
ok, thanks. so, I still don’t get it, but that’s OK, because douche-canoe is funnier and I totally get what that means!
It means “a good thing.” Like if you’re playing a game and you need to kill 500 trolls and they are swarming you and you’re about to die but your partner sets off a bomb that kills 499 of them as both of your life meters are about to empty out, she’s done that “for the win.” She’s won. She’s saved your bacon. She’s superior. She’s totally awesome and cool.
Likewise, if you’re in an argument online (OH MY GOD! SOMEBODY IS WRONG! ON THE INTERNET!) and you manage to pull out an hilarious, stunning, articulate, critical, response then the you’ve done it for the win. Or if you have the cutest cat macro.
Actually “For the win” goes back to days of yore when Hollywood Squares was on. You had to select a celebrity and then figure out if there answer to the question was either the truth or not. If you got it right then you got the square. It was life sized tic-tac-toe. So, when they would go for the three in a row, they would have to say “I’ll take Whoopi Goldberg for the win.”
Online gamers (like those that my wife hates, becuase they sucked me into their world) have used it as described above by brigidkeely to describe not sucking at the thing they are attempting to do (which everyone knows is – SAVING THE WORLD FROM INTERNET DRAGONS!!!). Other common phrases used for the epic battle that will commnce:
“LEROOOOOOOOOY JENKINS!!!” (WoW reference, youtube it if curious)
“More pew pew and less Q Q”
and my favorite
“FOR NARNIA!!!”
I’m going to print this out and just label it “evidence”. Expect to see it again the next time you call me a dork. Case closed.
There’s a story about my grandma calling the store with headquarters in Minneapolis “Pistol,” but I think she was probably being a smartass more than confused. Could have been the latter, though, since I wasn’t there.
I’ve started saying, “He looks like a doucheface,” but I think I might like canoe even better.
“Tar-jay” has thrown me into a rage since I was in high school. I… I may have some anger issues.
i think we should bring back “holy buckets” because it makes me smile and think of the good ole’ days.
my husband and i are (watch me not say “totes” here. nails on chalkboard) in LOVE with douche-canoe. his brain exploded the first time i used it and i spat milk when he contemplated its meaning – “so, what you’re saying is, sarah palin is a canoe paddling through some douche?”. we’re trying to use it sparingly lest we wear it out.
I just love you.
I so agree with you on pretty much everything here… except for -sauce, but only when it’s combined with weak. I love weak sauce, even though I hardly ever say it. Maybe I’ll start saying it more. Truthfully, until reading this, it was the only -sauce word I was aware of.
I needed this. Hilarious.
Thankfully I’ve never heard “Awesomesauce.”
I’ll happily fight the “FML” battle. Right up there with that is “#MomFail.” 99.99999% of the time I’ve seen that hashtag it’s been over something stoopid and normal.
I prefer “lactimafia.”
Just my $0.02 :)
Tashsparkles
This is great, can’t remember if I read the blog regularly at this time but I completely agree with you on all 5 of those words. I despise the term mommy blogger, and the rest, well you said it best. Thanks for the laugh too.