redux: MTV reportage on bling-bling

[Drew Danielson]

from a more 'authoritative' source on youth pop culture
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1471629/20030430/bg.jhtml - supposed
coiner wished he'd trademarked the term....


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Date:    Thu, 1 May 2003 09:54:40 -0400
From:    Jesse Sheidlower <jester at PANIX.COM>
Subject: Re: bling-bling in the OED

We did? Nice of someone to tell me about it.

Damn reporters.

Jesse Sheidlower
OED
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Jesse - does this mean that OED didn't add it?  Or just that reporters
are damnable?


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Date:    Thu, 1 May 2003 09:58:47 -0400
From:    "Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM>
Subject: Re: bling-bling in the OED

         Fark's name is a euphemism for fuck.  This may perhaps give
some hint of the level of discourse on its discussion boards.
------------------------------


Yeah, but did you expect critical academic analysis, based on the
comments I included in my original post?  (or really, from ME, after
all??  You may have noticed that I have largely kept my participation in
this list in the past year or so to reporting on reportage.)

Fark may not be a community of freelancing intellectuals.  BUT, they are
the sort of community that tends to have a handle on trends in pop
culture.  It's composed largely of college students and advertising and
graphic artist types (due to their emphasis on photoshop contests, which
reminds me - methinks 'photoshop' may be is a meme worthy of the
attention of lexicographers.  It's become fairly widely used as noun and
verb, and like 'aspirin' no longer applies specifically to the
commercial product from which it takes it's name).

Anyway, fark.com IS the type of group who's analysis speaks to the
cultural currency (or lack thereof, or 'worthiness' thereof) of new
lexical as well as visually-representative coinages.  They've been using
'bling-bling' in a cynical, clichéd manner for a few years now, so their
offhand comments (in aggregate) may be worthy of the attention of a
folklorist and/or dialectologist who's studying this term, or pop
culture in general.  To wit, they were the community that broke the
'giant cheeto from eBay' thing a few months back, as well as a handful
of other Internet- and pop-culture icons of image and speech in recent
years.

Take this all as the advocacy of a participant of fark.com who also
knows (just a couple of) things from the realm of dialectology.

Cheers!