Recently, I offered the idea that the term Photobomb was invented so that kids could excuse themselves for being incompetent photographers. Take a photo with some doofus in the frame, then later claim that they'd been 'Photobombed" rather than accept that they were incompetent when they took that photo.
Well, here is another one that occurred to me today. The word Hack. Hack has become widely used to describe someone doing something intelligent. Life Hacks, Food Hacks, Everything Hacks. But I asked a young person today (yea only one, but still) what they thought the word hack meant, and they weren't really confident of their answer, but said that it is when someone comes up with a magic-like way to do something better. They didn't say it was 'when someone smart came up with a solution to an everyday problem' which is the correct description.
So, it caused me to think that the word Hack is meant to -over time- remove the word and concept of intelligent/smart and replace it with some nebulus hard to define construct that people no longer identify with the idea of Smart. The end result would be that if you eliminate the concept Intelligent/smart, then you also eliminate the concept of dumb/incompetent. This is because of the rule that nothing can exist without its opposite.
And if someone can be dumb and incompetent without the social stigma that would go along with that, then you can much more quickly transform a population of folks who would be motivated to improve their thinking skills into a population of dumbasses who don't even have a concept of the fact that they are dumbasses and as a result are much more easily controlled by the government.
No doubt the Democrat party and maybe the majority of the Republican party love this idea.
I don't believe the kids come up with these terms on their own. This stuff is pumped into them through active measure communists blanketing social media. It's how your hard core commie works.
Over and out.
I remember when a hack was someone who did shoddy work.
ReplyDeleteThen to hack something was to cut it like with a machete, this being possibly related to the first usage, a crappy surgeon.
So to cut into a system was to hack into it, thus hackers.
But a hack job was always substandard.
I'm old.
I"m old too Ed. And a valuable addition to the subject from you.
DeleteHACK is when you're smart and come up with solutions? I'm with Ed....a hack is someone who does shoddy work or breaks into a system like a computer system.
DeleteThat was what I thought, anyway.
HOWEVER...I do agree with you that SMART and INTELLIGENT are things of the past...'gee, we need to ALL be smart, dontchaknow?'...if you say someone isn't smart, YOU're just plain MEAN, right? I think this started with the Simpsons, which I never watched but I saw their disdain of doing homework, the smart guy's the nerd or jerk, etc., and brother, did THAT take off around our country. I think it was evil and very effective.
There's no GOOD v BAD today because we can't let the BAD people FEEL BAD...right? there's an excuse for everything.\
And definitely, this isn't from KIDS...this is from who's out there being watched by our poor kids!!
by the way, it sounds like I'm doubting what you said about a hack....no...it's just news to me; i like to learn!
DeleteNot at all Z, I appreciate your description and agree.
DeleteIt's all part of the larger dumbing down of Americans, and defining deviancy down, as Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-Ny) coined this effort. An effort of the left. Remember when bums were bums? And as a bum, a stigma was attached. Now, these bona fide bums are called 'homeless,' or the 'unsheltered.' No stigma, see Kid?
ReplyDeleteRemember when there was such a thing as an unmarried mother? With a bastard child? Both held stigmas. Not anymore. No such thing as an unmarried mother. And no stigma involved in bearing illegitimate children, either. And the word illegitimate as it relates to children disappeared as well. And the word bastard? That's now a curse word, when it used to mean something.
And how about retarded? Remember when these kids who had extremely low IQ's for whatever reason were called retarded? And we called them retards, and thought nothing of it. And these retards were sent to special schools, or kept at home? Not anymore, no siree Bob. They are lumped in with the general public school population, and are called 'special needs' children, or some such other crap. No more retards, Kid. And no more stigma associated with being a retard. All of that has gone away.
See how this is all working?
AMEN to all you said, Fredd.....they have baby showers now for unwed moms. It's cool to bring kids up into poverty and no-father homes today. And ya...how's that all working?
DeleteIt may have started way way back in the early fifties, Z. I remember my cousin Barbara, who was a wayward teenager, and far ahead of her time was tickled pink with an item she'd found in a fashion magazine with the headline: Jacques Fath, Noted French Coutourier, Opened His Spring Collection With A Maternity Wedding Gown.
DeleteAll the adults in the room were scandalized. I remember my aunt, who was Barbara's mother saying, "Here give me that," and before we knew it she'd ripped the whole magazine to shreds and tossed it in the garbage.
That was 1952.
These things have been seeping into our culture since the Roaring Twenties at least. An insidious process to be sure, but maybe not altogether bad. Mid-Victorian hypocrisy was no picnic either. "Nice" girls of that era were taught that only low-class women of the streets ever admitted to experiencing pleasure during sex.
"Close your eyes, grit your teeth, dear, and think of England" was no joke back then.
Exactly Fredd. Thank you for adding to my point in such a way. May I add that the retards are destroying public education because 'no child left behind' ? Some kids need to be left behind in favor of providing a robust education experience for the smart kids. And this didn't start with Laura Bush. I have friends who quit teaching 30+ years ago because of that nonsense.
DeleteSomeone hacked my etch-a-sketch when I was little. I had made the most excellent staircase too...
ReplyDeleteDeBlade, I only hope they made sure counselors were available to you to deal with such an event.
DeleteI used to do Dali on my Etch-a-sketch. You couldn't tell though by looking at my creations. Picasso probably would have lent itself to the thing more easily, but I never liked Picasso art.
Picasso did not exist to "like," he was brought into the world to create wonder in young minds unbound by pre-conceived notions of what constitutes genuine "Art."
DeleteI always enjoyed him at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, but I couldn't LIVE with his stuff anymore than I could live with American Primitive Portraits by itinerant artists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Grim Stuff! ;-)
FT :-)
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