Memes, Tags and Other Stuff

I got "tagged" with a "meme" today. I'm not sure of the significance of that, but I have made inquiries. It seems the language I learned as a young English-speaking American has been surpassed, along with the technology I used to make a living.

I suppose it's only natural for language to evolve along with the societies that use it... and I have seen a lot of changes over time. Some words have completely different meanings now, others didn't exist a few years ago, and some that I still use are completely unknown to the English-speaking public at large.

Take "Tag" for example. When I was a kid, we played "tag" in the back yard. You tapped (or sometimes whacked, punched, or stomped depending on who you were playing with) the other player, then ran around trying to avoid being "tagged", and consequently becoming the dreaded "It". Great game.















In the cyberworld, “tag” means it’s your turn to write something on your blog, I guess. At least that’s what Yarntangler tells me…kind of like tag-team wrestling.




Then there’s “meme”. I tried pronouncing it “mehm”, leaving the final “e” silent, as I’d learned many years ago in grammar (do they use that word any more?) school. But I was told it is now "Mee-Mee", as in "Me! Me! Meeee!" (What the smart kids or the brown-noses used to say in class when they wanted to be called on). I’m also informed it means I am to copy the form, but not necessarily content of the tagger when I do my blog.

So, in the interest of not getting stuck in the past, here’s my Meme blog after being tagged by Yarntangler to come up with a list of eight somethings:


Eight Words I Don't Quite Completely Understand Anymore:

1...Install:

This is now a noun. Your program doesn't work? Maybe you got a bad install. When I was growing up, it was installation. Your installation was bad and whoever installed (verb) the program should have to do it again, or fix it at no extra charge. I've always thought installation was a perfectly good word. Install is shorter, though, and I guess the other advantage is that if something goes wrong, it's pretty hard to find anybody to pin it on. It's just a bad install.

2...Uninstall:

This is a new term, more than a little reminiscent of "Newspeak", the language of Orwell's "1984". It's a little scary because it replaces "remove" or "delete", words with negative connotation. Uninstall means to remove the program completely, without having to actually say it. It reminds me of "ungood" the new "bad" in Orwell's book. (Hey. He wasn't too far from the mark with that date, either, was he?)


3...Issue:

All of my references in the above paragraphs to problems, malfunctions, etc. have now been replaced by this co-opted term that formerly referred to matters of some general importance. Today, if your hard drive crashes and you lose everything in your computer, you have a hardware issue. If you have a ton of pictures in your computer, but see only a little window with a numbered "error" when you try to look at them, you have a software issue. Issues are resolved, at great expense, by guys with short-sleeved shirts speaking advanced forms of Newspeak while fully aware that you have no idea what they're saying. They do revert to Oldspeak when quoting the final charge.

4...Service:

There are a few variations of this one in play at the moment. You get a Service Pack every so often from Microsoft so your computer will keep working most of the time, and not let nasty Hacks (see below) get into your program through the Back Door (see below).
There is Customer Service available online, which means you get to allow somebody who works for Microsoft to Hack (see below) into your program through a Back Door (see below) that you open for him or her (pardon the oldspeak). This allows your Customer Service person to fix whatever went wrong with the Service Pack you just installed.
Finally, there is Process Service. This has nothing to do with computer processing or service of any kind. It retains its traditional meaning, and takes place when you try to use any of Microsoft's programs in ways they don't like.

5...They:

Newspeak substitute for "He" or "She", applies to all variations. This one is the laziest translation into politically-sensitive gender reference I've seen so far. Instead of acknowledging that there are any differences between male and female persons, we'll just refer to everybody in the plural, whether there's more than one or not. It reduces the awkward "he or she" to one word. Thus we have our erudite News anchors telling us: "If anyone wants to apply for a free Government handout, they can fill out the forms and mail them in." etc.

6...Hack:

I remember this word quite distinctly. It referred to writers. Not very good writers. In fact, it specifically meant bad writers who hammered out stuff every day to make a living. I was a hack for a long time. I wrote news. I wrote for radio. I wrote grammatically correct stories meant to be understood, but not necessarily remembered. And it worked: I don't remember a single story I ever wrote. In the olden days, before my time it also referred to a taxi, but I wouldn't expect anybody to remember that.
Today, it's become a verb and carries a badge of honor in certain nefarious circles. It means the act of getting into somebody else's computer. Without that person's consent or knowledge. One who can Hack is called a Hacker (rhymes with slacker, which has a similar connotation in a different context). Hackers write viruses, which are diseases for computer programs, and produce similar results to their biological counterparts.

7...Back Door:

I remember many an afternoon leaving home by the back door, running around in the neighborhood, getting dirty, then finally going back in for supper, again through the back door. It was the door we used instead of the front door, which was for company. It got a lot of use. Easy to understand. "Doo Doo Doo Lookin' out my back door".
Today, it means a hole in your computer program through which nasty things like viruses, worms and "who knows whatall" (as Aunt Bea would say) get in. Microsoft puts several thousand back doors into each new spiffy operating system it develops, then spends the next several years boarding them up as well as it can with "Service Packs" (see above). It gives the gang in Redland something to do between lattes.

8...Bankruptcy:

This term has changed meaning rather rapidly. Not long ago, it meant declaring yourself totally broke, and getting sent to the bottom of the economic barrel in exchange for protection from creditors. It meant you started from scratch, had no credit, and could look forward to many many years of financial struggle. It carried shame with it.
Today, it means those who are irresponsible managers of a giant corporation's funds can file for it, get government money to bail them out, and receive a handsome bonus for being clever enough to think of it. No shame; it's just business.

Yep. Times have changed.
Blog at ya later,
-Geezerguy