The influence of 100-year-old viral memes can still be felt today. We use the terms "foo" and "bar" in programming as standardized nonce words or even variable names; "foo" in particular is traceable at least as far back as the 1930s comic Smokey Stover, whose author Bill Holman was fond of putting nonsensical words, puns, and sight gags in his comics. The main character was a goofy fireman who drove a tiny two-wheeled fire truck actually called the Foomobile. This comic kicked off a sort of foo-mania in popular culture, as exemplified by certain Warner Bros. cartoons, in which for instance Daffy Duck would hold up a sign reading "Silence Is Foo!" "Foo" was related to "phooey" and "faux pas" and carried similar connotations of silliness or stupidity; it would combine with WWII slang "FUBAR" to form "foobar".
I gave up attempting to grok the appeal of "foo" when I realized it was probably just a 1930s dank meme, and "you had to be there" to fully appreciate it. But recently we're seeing this whole process play out again so we can witness, as it happens, the rise of a new nonsense word into popular culture: "skibidi".
That's just the initials given in quality control, which more and more people began using as synonymous for having good quality. Which is pretty easy to understand: you keep seeing it on the well working cars. So it's an OK car...
Nothing about it had goofy/silly implications.
It also predates pretty much everyone on this forum (and the foobar term), so it wouldn't qualify for "you have to experience it for yourself"
Recently President Biden broadcast a campaign ad where he begins with "Let's cut the malarkey", and I recognized that as a possibly Irish-adjacent neologism, so I looked it up, and apparently it was this guy: the great grand-daddy of all turn-of-the-century memes and coinages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tad_Dorgan
“It has been plausibly suggested that “foobar” spread among early computer engineers partly because of FUBAR and partly because “foo bar” parses in electronics techspeak as an inverted foo signal; […]”
I don't know how a UK medium such as the BBC forgot to mention the now well-known Louis Wain (an English artist) [1][2]. I share the same surname with him but am not related. My uncle, an antiquarian, gave me an original postcard from him. Before that, I discovered him in a low-quality encyclopedia at a girlfriend's house, in an entry on schizophrenia [3].
The jackalope meme is in its nineties. The Kokopelli meme is over a thousand years old and has lately been rehydrated. Venus of Willendorf is around 25k years old. One can play this game for a long time.
Cats sometimes refuse to be boxed in; other times an empty box is a cat's favorite plaything and habitat. Other times, the boxed-in cat is simultaneously alive and dead until the opening of the box. That's the beauty of cats: you just never know.
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I gave up attempting to grok the appeal of "foo" when I realized it was probably just a 1930s dank meme, and "you had to be there" to fully appreciate it. But recently we're seeing this whole process play out again so we can witness, as it happens, the rise of a new nonsense word into popular culture: "skibidi".
I think the term "OK" is a better example.
That's just the initials given in quality control, which more and more people began using as synonymous for having good quality. Which is pretty easy to understand: you keep seeing it on the well working cars. So it's an OK car...
Nothing about it had goofy/silly implications.
It also predates pretty much everyone on this forum (and the foobar term), so it wouldn't qualify for "you have to experience it for yourself"
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https://jargon-i18n.com/en/M/metasyntactic-variable.html
I don't think they're related to FUBAR . . . that would be fugazi.
Nonsense pop terms are not this. They're slang. Blame (mostly) teenaged girls for that stuff, not elite (mostly male) engineers of yore.
“It has been plausibly suggested that “foobar” spread among early computer engineers partly because of FUBAR and partly because “foo bar” parses in electronics techspeak as an inverted foo signal; […]”
https://www.photohistory-sussex.co.uk/BTNPointerCats.htm
http://www.19thcenturyphotos.com/Henry-Pointer's-cats-124601...
https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/person/104XHB
Complete with meme captions.
https://curiosity.lib.harvard.edu/daguerreotypes-at-harvard/...
For an even earlier drawing of some big cats, see the Lascaux cave from arond 17,000 years ago.
https://artsandculture.google.com/story/explore-the-fresco-o...
https://www.thevintagenews.com/2017/11/26/in-ancient-egypt-c...
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/egypt-cat-statues-mummies...
Maybe I'm stretching the original topic a bit just to post some cat content. Formal dinner: https://i.imgur.com/LBvzu3H.jpeg
[1] https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Wain
[2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt10687506/
[3] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Louis-Wain-Pictures-of-c...
You know a cool cat. You also know a skittish cat.
Most animal connotations have a singular meaning, but cats, cats refuse to be boxed in.
Cats sometimes refuse to be boxed in; other times an empty box is a cat's favorite plaything and habitat. Other times, the boxed-in cat is simultaneously alive and dead until the opening of the box. That's the beauty of cats: you just never know.
Because literally they do love boxes, both sitting on 2d squares and hiding inside 3d boxes.
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