OMG WTF, I’m Old
Posted by Lynnster on May 27, 2010
As I’ve mentioned before, since I have now been without cable a few years, instead of watching TV I usually watch original comedy stuff on YouTube – guys like this one and this one and this one, gals like this one, this piece of citrusy goodness, and, of course – these guys, as they’re the home team.
A month or so ago, I was voting in a Survivor-type contest among YouTubers, and I kept seeing this one three-letter acronym used over and over again in comments on people’s videos. It was confusing me terribly as to why people were repeatedly writing this acronym in regards to YouTubers they apparently liked.
Because when I was in college and thereabouts in the Eighties – and into the Nineties, for that matter – all those bad boys with their Black Flag and Minor Threat and Bad Brains records (i.e., the ones I always wound up with – go figure) used to stencil this three-letter acronym on guitar cases and skateboards and stuff. Or my ex’s slightly nerdy, acid-dropping, D&D-playing friends would fake tattoo it on themselves. It was spray painted on the walls (always either in black or red) of at least three apartments I remember in Murfreesboro and two in Nashville, and on the outside of one garage.
You’d have been hard pressed to walk into Cantrell’s, the Exit/In, or Elliston Square in the Eighties and not seen this acronym scrawled on a t-shirt, an Army jacket, or a pair of torn jeans in black magic marker. After all, it was all, everybody’s an anarchist, yada yada and all that… way back then in the ol’ Dark Ages. After all. (I just wanted to fit “all” into this paragraph somehow, just one more time.)
And it – said three-letter acronym – it wasn’t very, well… nice. (And understandably so, since everybody was an anarchist and all that.)
So a month or so ago, I was really having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around why in the world people kept leaving in comments things like:
“(insert YouTube comedian’s name here)… FTW!”
I guess it’s one of the disadvantages to not having kids/teenagers to set me straight – and next time, maybe I’ll have enough sense to just go straight to Urban Dictionary instead of straining my brain over something like “For The Win!” for days. Or a week and a half exactly.
But I guess at least not having teenagers meant I got to spare myself the inevitable ridicule when Mom asked why all these people on YouTube were telling all these other people to f*ck the world, right?
Kathy said
As a regular reader of Gawker and its satellite sites, I saw commenters punctuating posts with “FTW” for months before I made the connection.
Lynnster said
Man, I’m so glad to know now it wasn’t just me. Solidarity!
Chris Chamberlain said
Same for me the first 100 times I saw it. I just figured that I din;t like the same things that everybody was FTWing about.
Lynnster said
I know, right? Granted, I am rather habitually about twenty years’ immature personality-wise when it comes to a lot of things, but I just totally missed that one & it was really bugging me.
Hopefully I have now done my part in service to some of my fellow over-35 folks who are still in the dark about the whole thing, hee.
Mr. Mack said
I know, right? Granted, I am rather habitually about twenty years’ immature personality-wise
That all? ;)
The whole “having kids” thing I have found to be over-rated. I know they can be helpful when trying to decipher whats cool, but, yea, we have the internet, so after kids stop being cute and cuddly, they are pretty much obsolete, right? Anyway, I need to unload mine. I’m even willing to sell them into slavery, but I can’t let them go cheap. Which of mine would you like to bid on, Ms. Lynnster?
Lynnster said
LOL. Or twenty-five. :P
And you would never unload those kids, you know good & well how lucky you got with those two. They’re super good kids. :)