this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
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askchapo

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Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.

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Words like:

Bazinga:

Slop:

Treat:

Adults in the room doing hard decisions:

New additions: wine cave warriors. (no need to define)

Post hog

PMC Karens (hononary mention)

Possible additions: 'homo economicus'

Wtf is with all of this?

Edit: Ok, so from what I've gathered, you guys are basically a million Progressive podcasts' communities hiding under a trenchcoat that you call a Lemmy community...

homo economicus

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[–] [email protected] 69 points 2 years ago

"Adults in the room" is an old phrase, but I think the tide began to turn from self-congratulatory to derisive when Yanis Varoufakis made it the title of his book about the Troika condemning Greece to austerity. It's popular here because we have a unified loathing for West Wing-style liberalism that congratulates itself for making "tough choices" that inevitably and exclusively harm the working class.

[–] [email protected] 63 points 2 years ago (1 children)

A week ago I thought the Hexbear dialect was fully incomprehensible

This week I am saying "brainworms" and "treats must flow" out loud

Please help.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago

It’s a one way street to sounding like you’re doing spun out word association when talking politics

[–] [email protected] 52 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Bazinga is Sheldon's catchphrase in The Big Bang Theory--it's emblematic of the "I fucking love science" crowd who value dubious technological achievements over actual political solutions

Slop: don't know the history of this one, but it fits with the pig theme

Treat: also not sure about the origin, but (as someone who has listened to like two episodes of Chapo Trap House) this feels very Matt Christman, but it could also be some Twitter thing which I am blissfully unaware of

Adults in the room doing hard decisions: this isn't a Hexbear coinage, but something liberals have actually said without a hint of irony (just search the Washington Post or the New York Times and you'll surface countless articles about supposed "adults in the room" like Mattis or Tillerson). It was used a lot to describe people in Trump's administration who the media deemed worthy stewards of empire who would steer the administration in the right direction, and is also used to describe the "mature" civil Democrats in contrast to the "childish" unseemly GOP.

[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

I am not 100% on it but I'm pretty sure "Treat" discourse comes from Matt Christman, Slop originally started as the "Slop in my trough, my snout descends" bit from r/CTH referring to when a new podcast episode dropped (that I'm pretty sure has it's roots in being called little piggies by Will and Amber at one point), and you got plenty of answers for Bazinga/AitR.

matt-jokerfied biggus-piggus bazinga

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[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 years ago (1 children)

A bit of in-group slang is extremely normal for communities. The proliferation of ideograms here is way more interesting very-smart

[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Ok Big Cat Chungus... seriously, though I should actually talk about these emojis, perse...

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago (4 children)

seriously, though I should actually talk about these emojis

Don't come for our emojis. The consequences are dire.

olimar-point pikmin-carry-l emoji haters pikmin-carry-r barbara-pit

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (11 children)

Much of our dialect comes from the tale of brave Ulysses, whose long imprisonment in the mind palaces of the snide and thoughtless taught him to hone words of derision that could cut through the pillars of the homo economicus worldview. In time he departed for another adventure, but we still wield the words he forged us.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 years ago

UlyssesT has simply sailed to Avalon and will return when he is needed most.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

homo economicus

Lmao is this a new one? I think it's originally from Adam Smith where he argues it's a positive thing lol, and Samir Amin uses it sarcasticly, along with quips and jokes about "actually existing capitalism". I'll see if I can find it.

The liberal virus caused among its victims a curious schizophrenia. Humans no longer lived as whole beings, organizing themselves to produce what is necessary to satisfy their needs (what the learned have called "economic life") and simultaneously developing the institutions, the rules, and the customs that enable them to develop (what the same learned people have called "political life"), conscious that the two aspects of social life are inseparable. Henceforth, they lived sometimes as homo oeconomicus, abandoning to "the market" the responsibility to regulate their "economic life" automatically, and sometimes as "citizens," depositing in ballot boxes their choices for those who would have the responsibility to establish the rules of the game for their "political life."

[–] [email protected] 21 points 2 years ago

sometimes, it's like i can still hear his voice....

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago (1 children)

the tale of brave Ulysses

Immediately brought to mind the legend of old Ulysses

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago

fidel-salute he gave us an arsenal

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This is bait for ulysses simps

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 years ago

You saw right through my plan!

[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 years ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 33 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

I think a lot of these expressions are from the great @[email protected] and his protracted peoples war on on the bazingas, wine cave warriors, and treat defenders.

fidel-salute to a real one

[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 years ago

wine cave warriors,

I forgot those shits...

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 years ago

Nobody decided, or kinda we all decided on aggregate, I guess. It's normal cultural development of a community. Hexbear is a bit like an island, sheltered from the most extreme currents of the interwinds but always in dialogue with them. Sometimes a new term gets carried here, and sometimes that term has more staying-power here than elsewhere, so it sticks. It might also shift in meaning, relative to more common definitions. Bazinga brain could be a hexbear original, but I'm not sure, really.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

pretty sure "Adults in the room doing hard decisions" was just Ulysses brute forcing similar rants a dozen times per day lol. I don't know that I've ever seen anyone else say it

[–] [email protected] 39 points 2 years ago (1 children)

UlyssesT is a cultural icon 💅

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 years ago

"bazinga brain" was also a UlyssesT innovation

[–] [email protected] 28 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Most of this lingo was imported from r/cth, Twitter, and maybe some pods. I think bazinga and bazinga-brain may be native to Hexbear, but slop certainly predates it as a perjovative for a long time. Not sure about treat discourse, but probably left-Twitter.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 years ago (3 children)

category A: chapo trap house & cumtown bullshit, i'm not even sure what exactly comes from these, but tons of people here are big fans even if the posting doesn't often indicate as such. i'm pretty sure "Treats" is from chapo

category B: "adults in the room" and similar is just repetition/shorthand of liberal rhetoric, done mockingly. Citations Needed's verbiage have been copped in some cases 'thought terminating cliche' but i'm sure a lot of it is organic from people reading the same bullshit in 100 newspapers for years

category C: Domestic Products, from the Power Posters; "Bazinga-Brain"... but don't forget stuff like "we may have to start making excuses for the terror" or commonly recalled taglines (and joking about taglines lol)

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 years ago

"Adults in the room" is from Yanis Varoufakis' about the fucking over of Greece by the EU lanyards even though it also fucked the EU and made everything worse nd everyone knew it.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The guy who killed Kissinger did

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Can we just have a dictionary in one of the comms? I think it would help a lot of newcomers acclimate to definitions here, both site-generated and in the context of leftist theory. For example, 'liberalism' defined by the average US citizen is very different from the one used in the rest of the world.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 2 years ago (3 children)

You forgot “PMC Karens”, which I believe is a BlackMoldFutures original

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 years ago (3 children)

bazinga comes from the "young sheldon" tv show. it's used here to refer to liberal technocrats who believe the problems of the world can be solved with sufficiently advanced algorithms, that humans are simply waiting for someone smart enough to come along to invent solutions to the problem caused by capitalism.

the treat discourse is a slowly simmering struggle session about how leftists in the imperial core should interact with the treat economy, whereby behavior is incentivized by access to treats: minor luxuries, tasty but not very nutritious food and snacks, the carrot of capitalism's carrot and stick. "slop" is hog feed and we're the hogs, demanding content, entertainment, and treats.

"adults in the room making/doing hard decisions" is just making fun of neoliberals and centrists who see themselves as mature, responsible, logical, rational, capable of setting aside their emotional reactions to atrocities around the world in order to wisely compromise with the people committing those atrocities and benefit materially from them.

there are a few users who use these terms more, but i don't think any one person was responsible for coining them.

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[–] [email protected] 22 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I coined them. I'm witty, that's what.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago

We've been around each other for ar least 3 years now.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago (23 children)

That's just language in general, people together create lects like dialects, sociolects, etc. Just like how a group of friends have inside jokes only they know. Or memes emerge online to serve as symbols and references for communication.

Hexbear is an independent online social space, so of course we'd eventually see our own slang and lects! We even have our own lore, but I don't get it too much either tbh

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don't think anyone really makes a decision about stuff like this, the position of everything (atomic, subatomic whatever) is predetermined by cause and effect (including the stuff in your brain that causes "thoughts" and the hallucination of free will)

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (4 children)
[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

Bazinga brain are people who believe that gadgets and widgets and technology will solve humanities problems because the best technology will rise to the top via the neoliberal marketplace. It's pop science utterly divorced from humanism. Think elon musk or Neil degrasse Tyson, in contrast with scientists that have a sense of compassion for humanity, like Carl Sagan. Scientism wedded to an implicit faith in capitalism

[–] [email protected] 18 points 2 years ago (4 children)

Scientism wedded to an implicit faith in capitalism

So, more of a tech-oriented capitalist entreprenurial New Athiesque ideology...?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

I think there's an aspect of it that relates to whiz-bang aesthetics of tech marketing too. Not just a faith in techno-solutions, but a celebration of the belief that techno-solutioning is really the only thing that makes society/existence improve, and these solutions only come from techno-genius individuals.

It's the evolution of the 'eureka' story into a full mythology of progress. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-archimede/

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 years ago (2 children)

It essentially equates technocrats with some other superficial, vaguely liberal, cultural phenomena (big bang theory or i fucking love science type stuff). Hard to explain but I think it works well as technocracy has a pretense of being scientific and ineffable to the common person, but in reality it's pretty superficial and just constructed so as not to disturb established power structures.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 years ago (1 children)

The catchphrase of the character Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory, who is a fan of Elon Musk

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (2 children)

What are you gonna use bourgeois english?
I'm saying this unironically. There are so many ways in which capitalism and colonialism oppress, and concepts which are subject to chilling effects when we try to communicate them, that we really do have to make up our own words for them as we come to understand them. Most of them are pretty self-explanatory when you're confronted with them for the first time if you've been thinking about these things for a while. Now that you've condensed these concepts into snappy words or phrases you can do a higher level of analysis on them, and communicate your ideas more easily. The humor attached to them even helps you remember them more easily.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago

The girl reading this

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 years ago (3 children)
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