[HN Gopher] An Elegant Sufficiency, or the Curious Case of a Vic...
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An Elegant Sufficiency, or the Curious Case of a Victorian Meme
(2018)
Author : dcminter
Score : 20 points
Date : 2021-05-14 18:23 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blogs.bl.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (blogs.bl.uk)
| anyfoo wrote:
| Anecdotical of course, but I remember "memes" existing in
| localized/regional form long before the Internet was publicly
| available. If we had to have a name for it, we said it was an
| "insider joke"[1].
|
| This was usually small silly stuff like words or phrases that
| were repeated, sometimes situational and back-and-forth, or
| callbacks to earlier events that made a mark somehow.
|
| As a small and silly example, I remember that around the part of
| the city where I grew up, for a while we had this thing where
| when someone asked why we were going to do something (like going
| to some other neighborhood), instead of the real reason (like
| going to get ice cream) we would all answer with fake
| exasperation "it's about the principle!!"[2].
|
| It's just stupid, fun bonding stuff teenagers do, most of which
| is probably forgotten when you grew up and absurdist humor
| becomes a bit less interesting.
|
| I remember that the word "meme" actually was invented to, so it
| seemed to me, describe exactly this phenomenon, and only years
| later the Internet meme superseded that more general meaning to
| something more specific.
|
| [1] Although this was Germany in the 90s, we literally used the
| English words "insider joke". There's a lot of expressions
| synthesized using English words in common usage in Germany. [2]
| This one actually in German.
| allturtles wrote:
| > How did this concept proliferate and propagate without the
| internet, or at least written records?
|
| I'm perplexed by the author's perplexity. Isn't it obvious that
| short sayings like this (and other similar things, e.g.
| children's playground rhymes) propagate orally?
| jfengel wrote:
| I don't think it's bafflement, exactly, but an interest in
| knowing more. There are linguists who study that, including
| playground rhymes.
|
| It's certain that they propagate orally, but it's an open
| question of why some things propagate and others don't. Just
| what is it that took one phrase from that poem and turned into
| into an increasingly elaborate set of semi-codified structures?
| The oral transmission puts limits on how fast and under what
| circumstances it can spread: it requires direct person-to-
| person contact rather than broadcast.
|
| It's the tip of a ton of research that they only alluded to,
| and would be curious to know more.
| greatgoat420 wrote:
| Right like '23-skidoo' which I remember from an ancedote from
| some survivors of the titanic
| (https://www.titanicinquiry.org/BOTInq/BOTInq06Joughin03.php)
|
| > 6344. You are quite right; it is No. 23 door? - We used to
| call it the skidoo door, on account of the number. That is how
| I remember the number.
|
| 6345. (The Commissioner.) I do not understand that? - It is an
| American joke.
|
| 6346. Will you explain it? - I could not explain it, my Lord.
| moshmosh wrote:
| Can confirm that my kids often come home having learned some
| trick, craft, joke, or rhyme from the other kids, that I _also_
| learned from other kids in school. One supposes adults may have
| a role in keeping these alive, but the larger effect seems to
| just be older kids passing down the knowledge to younger grades
| (their younger siblings, maybe) who spread the memes among
| themselves, generation after generation.
| pufinho wrote:
| This term kind of reminds me of an "joke" that's usually
| transmitted orally in my country. I can only assume that the
| origin of the meme may have something in common. A translation of
| the joke would be like:
|
| After lunch, the farmer boy tells his mom:
|
| - My belly is stuffed!
|
| His mom replies:
|
| - That's so impolite! This Friday when you have dinner on the
| city with your rich uncle, use elegant words like "I'm
| satisfied".
|
| - Ok, mom.
|
| Friday, after dinner, the boy says:
|
| - My satisfied is stuffed!
| selimthegrim wrote:
| A reasonably famous joke in Punjab goes as follows
|
| A rich nobleman is embarrassed at getting food stuck in his
| beard during a party and his servant motions him over by the
| bathroom door in order to comb it out. While he is with him he
| instructs the servant that next time this happens he should
| come to the table and tell him "Sir, the nightingale is perched
| on the tree"
|
| Well the next time, the servant walks in, sees the food in the
| beard and gets flustered because he can't remember his line, so
| he blurts out "Sir, the shitty thing happened!" (The word for
| shit and bathroom is the same in very vulgar, rustic Punjabi,
| cf. shitter)
| dcminter wrote:
| Could well be - my family's variant was: "I have had an elegant
| sufficiency and if I have any more I'll bust!" which is very
| much in the same vein!
| dcminter wrote:
| I came across this article when googling to see if a variant upon
| it from my own family was a quotation!
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| > But the universe must have decided that this wasn't good
| enough, and presented me with the phrase the very next day
|
| "Baader-Meinhof phenomenon". You'll see this name again soon.
| gregsq wrote:
| I'm curious about this and will ask my mother who picked it up
| from hers, and she from hers and so on. I've even used it myself
| as a kind of victorian throwback pleasantry. It's a meme rather
| than a mimic I'm sure. Just being polite when served by those
| close, together with a whole lot of other cultural context. A
| descendant on her side had a fruit and veges shop in old Brighton
| when the royal pavillion attracted aristocrats and so on. Later
| in deptford, bombed during WWII and surrounded by relative
| poverty. Stiff upper lip and lower class manners mixed with
| stoicism. I'd look in the east end and Kent for English context.
| analyte123 wrote:
| This reminds me of the Civil War meme "Mister, here's your mule"
| [1]. With the meme supply limited by word-of-mouth, I can only
| imagine how riotously funny both of these must have been to those
| at the time.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here%27s_your_mule
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2021-05-14 23:01 UTC)