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It took me several moments to realize what the fuck 'blops' was.

Can you guys try to be a little less obtuse in your slang, please?

MKSheppard wrote:It took me several moments to realize what the fuck 'blops' was.

Can you guys try to be a little less obtuse in your slang, please?

Mind cluing me in then?

Blops = Black Ops = CoD Black Operations.

Have you even played it? Would you have anything meaningful to say about it?

I mean, you could have ASKED.

Stark wrote:Have you even played it? Would you have anything meaningful to say about it?

Eventually I will when there's a reasonable sale on it.

I mean, you could have ASKED.

And maybe you could have used something a bit more self explanatory in regards to the latest slang in the gaming world.

Are you seriously defining yourself as the metric for acceptable 'gaming slang'?

EDIT - Amusingly typing 'blops' into google gets you a first hit on Black Ops and some threads where it seems much of the market does the same thing.

Stark wrote:Are you seriously defining yourself as the metric for acceptable 'gaming slang'?

Black Ops works as a contraction of the game title, it's also clear and concise enough to be readily understood in a moment.

Blops? That lack of a space is a real killer in decrypting it on the fly.

MKSheppard wrote:Black Ops works as a contraction of the game title, it's also clear and concise enough to be readily understood in a moment.

Blops? That lack of a space is a real killer in decrypting it on the fly.

It's on Google, it's on Urban Dictionary, it's brought up in the context of conversations about CoD all the time.

But hey internet slang needs to be "decrypted" I hear.

Here is how adults use words. First, you define the word. Second, you use the word. If you use a word that other people don't know, mocking them for not using the words is counter-productive to conversation. Defining the word lets conversation resume.

Some people don't understand how communication works, so I made this its own little thread. And no, this doesn't mean that you have to clarify your slang before you can use it; it means that we frown on people being a dick about it. Like it or not, PR-1 is a guideline for effective communication, not a tyrannical handicap.

Lagmonster wrote:Here is how adults use words. First, you define the word. Second, you use the word.

Isn't it the other way around most of the time? You use a word in context, get the vacuous look in response because context wasn't enough to explain it, and then clarify what it means?

Only because this is the internet, we can't see the vacuous look, so we have to wait for people to ask because otherwise, we have no way of knowing that they're looking vacuous.

And because this is the internet, I have to highly recommend adding Urban Dictionary to your search bar, if you can. There are so many words that have been made up in various corners of the web (and the web seems to have LOTS of corners) that it's impossible to keep up otherwise.

I'm not sure how much sympathy I have for someone who uses military acronyms all the time for not understanding contracted slang.

Rye wrote:I'm not sure how much sympathy I have for someone who uses military acronyms all the time for not understanding contracted slang.

Obvious question
Such as?

Look, use your goddamn good judgment, people. If you're talking privately with your peers, you already know that everyone involved understands the acronyms and terms being used. If you're talking with a public audience, you know that you have to simplify or explain the words you use and avoid slang.

Conversely, if you notice a conversation between five engineers and you yourself are a business major, maybe you should realize that it's rude to stick your ass into a social situation in which you are going to be handicapped and demand that everyone either slow things down for you or change the subject.

These are not complicated social conventions.

For the record, "Blops" is neither a discernable acronym nor even a sensible abbreviation; it's a stupid attempt to make your shit seem exclusive.

Shep is always helpful if he uses an acronym you don't understand. He even writes an entire informative posts on it. It's quite educational.

Mr Bean wrote:

Rye wrote:I'm not sure how much sympathy I have for someone who uses military acronyms all the time for not understanding contracted slang.

Obvious question
Such as?

Shep wrote:So. After a huge interminable delay...we're back to the early proposals for Ares V with SSMEs.

So how long until NASA realizes that throwing away five SSMEs per flight is fucking stupid like before and goes back to RS-68?

Oh, and because we eliminated Ares I "Stick", it means our astronauts will launch once again on a flying sidemount bomb thanks to the location of two blowtorches next to a huge tank of LH2/LOX.

Yes, I know that NASA had the SRB segments redesigned after Challenger, but the threat is always there; which is you know why CONSTELLATION would have put the crew on a separate rocket which would not have had that threat.

Oh; to add insult to injury:....

NASA loves it's acronyms.

SSME = Space Shuttle Main Engine. Also known as RS-25. It costs between $50-80 million.

RS-68 = Expendable engine designed by Rocketdyne; hence it's RS-xx designator. It costs $25-$30 million.

LH2 = Liquid Hydrogen
LOX = Liquid Oxygen

SRB = Solid Rocket Booster.

RSRM = Redesigned (or Reusable Solid Rocket Motor) = redesigned SRBs after Challenger Disaster

ASRM = Advanced Solid Rocket Motor. Proposed in 1990s, died.

MKSheppard wrote:NASA loves it's acronyms.

SSME = Space Shuttle Main Engine. Also known as RS-25. It costs between $50-80 million.

RS-68 = Expendable engine designed by Rocketdyne; hence it's RS-xx designator. It costs $25-$30 million.

LH2 = Liquid Hydrogen
LOX = Liquid Oxygen

SRB = Solid Rocket Booster.

RSRM = Redesigned (or Reusable Solid Rocket Motor) = redesigned SRBs after Challenger Disaster

ASRM = Advanced Solid Rocket Motor. Proposed in 1990s, died.

Oh, I gotcha - (Hello, space nerd, here!) but the N&P may not have. I wasn't taking a shot at you, but Bean asked, and when Bean asks, you answer toot suite

Anyhooz - I feel like when it comes to slang/acros, etc. asking is fine. I've certainly never felt dumb (When I first arrived to the board, I had to ask in two or three thread what the hell IMHO meant) asking. Anyway - I think we all just have to accept that when venturing into certain....places....on SDN, Slang is to be expected. It's not to be deliberately exclusionary but lets face it - who wants to type Dissidia Final Fantasy Mencho Gai-Jin Sengoku 7 when Diss7 works just fine (Given the expected audience, of course)

That said - Gaming slang is the worst because it's soooo time sensitive (SMB and SMB could mean two totally different things.) and contextual, too (FPS and FPS in gaming slang can mean two completely different things as well). So, we gamers aren't trying to be deliberately obtuse, we're just...weird.

A student of mine asked me something that closely relates to this...

I was explaining why things such as "ain't", "gonna" and "wanna" are considered slang, and not proper English.

She argued (very intelligently, for a girl of 14, I must admit) that languages are like living organisms, and as such, they grow and evolve.

Then, as per some sort of epiphany, my subconscious mind passed on the right answer to my conscious brain (well, after all, EVOLUTION had been mentioned)

"Well, yes. But when it comes to language, it all boils down to understanding. If whatever new words you use HELP and PROMOTE understanding and comprehension, then it can be called 'evolution', for understanding the same concepts from the same words -signs, and whatnot- is the essence of communication..."

"If your new words only introduce potential confusion and ambiguity, then it cannot be called 'evolution', but rather 'degeneration'..."

So, there...

It might be one person's cluelesness what keeps him from understanding funny acronyms and/or topic-specific slang.

It is sheer stupidity to assume that EVERYONE in the world will understand your little special-interest related acronyms and words.

I rather doubt that linguists would accept your definition of the 'degeneration' of a language. All Romance languages have developed from Latin. Given the fact that a common language across Spain, France and Italy facilitates communication, you would describe this development as a degeneration. Do you really think you can justify that?

Comprehension between whom? Using plain 'who' for the object form whom often helps slightly in sentence comprehension, because people aren't used to it. If you are raised in an area that speaks English using things such as 'ain't' as a contracted 1st person negative copula, or pronounces the vowel spelled most often in english as 'u(e)' as 'oo' in some words [UNION and TUESDAY's vowel- long ago, all the native 'u(e)' spellings in english appeared to have a y, such as 'nyew' for 'noo', yet many many people say 'noo'. More in America than say nyew. Or 'zoose' instead of 'zyews'.], then it helps you understand for people to speak closer to your native dialect.

Now, your correct answer should have been to your student: "There is no reason that these words are improper english because they are not improper english- there is no proper english. However, there is proper 'standard english' for each country*, which is the accepted dialect of polite and usual everyday speech as well as the most well-understood in that region because it is the universal communication standard across regional and cultural barriers. As such, the rules of the standard english one is learning should be followed, because the goal is to speak standard english (at least at first) as it is accepted in almost any context."

You could have further added that acquiring slang is useful for speaking to natives casually once you have the ability to communicate well enough to form friendships or talk casually, and should only beforehand be done to allow students to understand otherwise undecipherable words (eg 'am not' > 'ain't', which isn't easily deduceable even to a native without knowing in advance.), and should be mentioned in the same light as 'if you hear 'prolly', that means the same thing as what we should pronounce 'probably'; and 'doncha' means 'don't you'.' to prepare them for actually hearing speakers and not going 'wait what' when something like 'you prai** know, doncha?' comes out of their mouth while they're speaking.

*Standard British English and Standard American and Standard Australian and whatnot are all close enough to be understood without significant problems, so it's not a huge deal which one learns. This matters more for something like German- Standard German is far more useful than a regional dialect to a speaker, even though natives use both (obviously the regional one only with other natives, and perhaps in the form of partially standardised language, like many blacks pronouncing american english with AAVE vowels but standard english grammar when speaking standard english.)

**no joke. The standard pronunciation of Probably in the current american english is in all but careful speech 'prolly' when you're normally speaking, and 'prai' in fast sentences. Say it out loud, slowly, and it sounds dumb. But say it real fast with 'I'm-prai-gunna-go' and it works completely well, even among erudite speakers who think they speak perfectly grammatically. I just turned to my girlfriend and said that and she said 'where?', not 'you're what going to go?'

Languages don't degenerate. They change. They change away from standards, that's right, but who decided that mid 1950s white british TV newscasters from affluent areas of london descended from aristocrats were in charge of the only good and wholesome speech? (They other white british aristocrats did, naturally). If you insist that any change from a standard is degeneration, Akkleptos, I'm gonna have to demand I know whether you pronounce the following things correctly: Hablar (to speak), 'fav-lar'. Vuestro 'vos-tro'. Pace 'pa-tse'. Pronto 'promp-to'. You can also, if you want to be especially well-understood by proper speakers, pronounce the final '-e' in Hablar and the final o as -us or -um in other words. The o is confusing, as it obscures which word the word is, and is just a lazy, degenerate habit.

Certainly when people started mispronouncing those, it caused confusion to the aristocrats or minstrels or whoever invented and spoke the standard dialect and was decried as lazy***. But the people who all said them as a community had no problem, even as a nation. At a certain point, which we are fast approaching for example with 'probably', the be-b'd form will provoke confusion among younger speakers who more and more make up the nation. This isn't degeneration any more than the fact that clothing fashions change is degeneration (as much as people will decry shorter skirts and smaller bikinis as evidence the new generation is corrupt, the equivalent of the prescriptivists or unknowingly ignorant who make such claims).

***Simpler words have a way of getting more complex- instead of 'am not', you have to remember a whole new word 'aint'. And english's simplified verb tenses have built up into a monster, especially in some colloquial dialects, where 'I shoulda-bin-fixin-to-make' means 'I should have (begun or other future meaning) to make', which is a whole lot of verbs and endings to juggle and what they all combine as, since the meanings are often arbitrary (there's no pastness in the normal meaning of 'have' yet in 'I have gone' it functions sort of like the opposite of the future marker 'will'). Lazy? Easier to pronounce, but harder in many ways because it makes the language less regular. And language does a neat moebius trick of simplifiying further and further while agglomerating and adding new words to disambiguate the old slurred and broken words until it's just as complex as it started as.

I'm unsure how much, if any, it adds to the conversation, but my policy since my introduction to the internet was always to adjust my language based on who my audience is. In formal documents or when speaking to a self-proposed intelligent forum like stardestroyer, you write formally if you don't want to be looked down upon. In video game forums, while you can sound intelligent to write as formally as possible, it's also likely that you can confuse or alienate people who aren't completely familiar with the English language. I've found this to be even more the case in video games like MMORPGs - you come off as more comprehensible most of the time if you use light slang when possible, because this is what the non-native English speakers in those games are the most comfortable with. Writing in complete sentences with full punctuation not only takes longer in those settings*, it also somewhat alienates people and makes them think you're uptight.

*=this is a good way to gain a reputation as a very slow typist in games where speed of messaging makes a big difference in the success of various events

When I note someone is using either a more complex or a simpler word than I typically use, I go out of my way to swap in the word they're more comfortable with, as long as it doesn't make my phrases appear awkward. Even further along this line of thinking, I hate using what most people would call "big words" because the point of language is to make the audience understand, not to alienate them into thinking you're smarter than you really are! It's downright embarrassing to see when other people throw out words they know the audience won't understand, with no intention to do anything but feel better about how they confused the locals with their nonsense.

In essence, the most important part of whether the language is correct is whether or not it fits the mentality of the audience. Formal papers should require as little slang as possible, because the audience (the teacher) expects formal language. Conforming to what others are comfortable with in language is not a bad thing, unless you specifically want to stand out. It's an important skill to be refined and mastered.

Amusingly, the longer a game title, the more interesting the acronyms get. e.g. Bayonetta would never be abbreviated as just B or BAY with any expectation of the recieving party understang to what you're referring (Unless you're on a bayonetta board) but you say something silly like Assbro or blops or blands and everyone knows precisely what you're talking about. I've always thought that was teh funneh.

Chardok wrote:

Shep wrote:So. After a huge interminable delay...we're back to the early proposals for Ares V with SSMEs.

So how long until NASA realizes that throwing away five SSMEs per flight is fucking stupid like before and goes back to RS-68?

Oh, and because we eliminated Ares I "Stick", it means our astronauts will launch once again on a flying sidemount bomb thanks to the location of two blowtorches next to a huge tank of LH2/LOX.

Yes, I know that NASA had the SRB segments redesigned after Challenger, but the threat is always there; which is you know why CONSTELLATION would have put the crew on a separate rocket which would not have had that threat.

Oh; to add insult to injury:....

That was in a thread about rocket engineering. These terms are so commonly used, everyone who doesn't know them shouldn't be in that conversation anyways. (Or look up not only them, but also a shitload of other background info.)


"Blops" on the other hand... I have never heard of that as an abbreviation of Black Ops and I consider myself a gamer. (I was initially thinking about the files you need to safe before jailbreaking or updating your iOS device, so that you can downgrade later.)

Even for slang, Blops is a pathetic slang because one would have easily have mistaken it as just a typo for "Blob".

If people want to create some stupid slang, could they at least be a little intelligent about it, and not be asininely stupid about it? Which seems to describe most of the stupid gamer culture and whatever not out there?

Fingolfin_Noldor wrote:Even for slang, Blops is a pathetic slang because one would have easily have mistaken it as just a typo for "Blob".

If that's the case then you should probably look into getting a better pair of glasses.