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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3063 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 17, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Cultural imperialism in one image.

I see myself in this. I grew up saying "pop" and never thought twice about it until I went to college. There, I met "soda" sayers who planted the first seeds of doubt.

After college, I moved to Seattle. It was still pop country back then, but in the merge of a cultural transition. It's firmly a part of Sodastan now. Worse, I am now myself a soda-sayer. I cringe a little when people say pop.

I'll admit to a rebellious instinct. Fuck the soda-sayers. Sometimes, I just want to let loose with a hard "pop" in the best upper Minnesota accent I can muster. "You guys want some POP?" But that would be mere playacting, not authentic self-expression. I'm no longer street. I've been corrupted.

Is this what it feels like to be elite human capital?

Gatsby 1: I’ll have a pop!

Gatsby 2: I’ll have a cola!

Gatsby 3: I’ll have a soda!

Gatsby 4: I’ll have a carbonated beverage!

Gatsby’s nightmare: I’ll have a glass of water.

Some older relatives of mine say soda-pop, which I always found endearing. I could never tell if that was because they grew up near the boundary line or if it was used nationwide as a compromise term back when soda and pop-sayers were more equal in number (as part of some anti-coke alliance, I suppose).

The gradual Californiazation (Californication?) of young Americans' accents is sad to observe. The only college-educated zoomers I hear with distinct regional pronunciations are from New York City, the deep deep South, and a few pockets of the upper midwest.

How do you feel about the Aussie term for it - soft drink? I love it, it's so different to the usual Australian slang, where who cares what it is just take the first syllable, ignore everything else and slap a vowel on the end. D'ya wanna have a barbie for breakie? Nah, me and Kev are gonna take the tinnie out when he gets back from the bottle-o, I'll just have a cuppa and throw some stubbies in the esky." But then you get to carbonated beverages and suddenly it's euphemism city! Soda is starting to make some in roads here though, although despite coming from old soda country, I don't like it. Stick with soft drink Australia! Or if you really have to use something else go with the other Australian slang for it, albeit much less common - fizzy/lolly water.

In Japan the word ジュース or juice means anything not tea, coffee, or booze. So yeah, any fizzy drink (boom!) It's annoying.

I grew up saying Coke because Coke was what we drank. My relatives--good, country people--used to say "Co-cola."

My kids are now picking up some Australian slang thanks to bluey. "Stuffy" for stuffed animal sticks out the most to me. I now can't remember what I called them as a kid, but it wasn't stuffy.

If you're a fellow burgerclap you probably called them "stuffed animals" or else just [name of animal/character]. I don't know of any other generic name. Some time in the early 2000s(?) I started hearing people say "plushie" but that always sounded like some cutesy/marketing bullshit to me, not a normal word you'd use when l, say, talking to your parents.

I thought "plushie" specifically referred to stuffed toys with a particular outer fabric.

lolly water

I didn't think that kind of product would be carbonated; I'd expect it to taste rather flat.

It's a bit of a catch all for any water based sweet drink, I've heard people refer to cordial that way too and I assume that's where it comes from - cordial used to be really popular in Australia. But yeah that was years ago, these days lolly water is mostly used to refer to soda in that traditional Aussie joke format of belittling something so you can laugh at the person who gets upset at your belittling.

“D'ya wanna have a fizzy?” sounds properly Australian to this Limey’s ears.

Nice, plus the added benefit of the Kiwis usually following the Aussies means I'd get to also enjoy hearing large Maoris saying "D'yuh wunna huv uh fuzzy bruh?" to each other.

I remember people used to call them fizzy drinks when/where I was a kid.

I can understand using the term "soda" and "coke" is of course obvious but "pop"? Seriously? What kind of idiot thought about that term?

The earliest known usage of "pop" is from 1812; in a letter to his wife, poet Robert Southey says the drink is "called pop because pop goes the cork when it is drawn, & pop you would go off too if you drank too much of it." The two words were later combined into "soda pop" in 1863

Presumably somebody who noticed that it has bubbles in it, and bubbles pop.

I come from soda country, but we're Coke people. Most moved from Coke land to soda country during the depression.

I love petty liguistic wars.

My personal favourite is the French one over what you call a pastry with chocolate in it.

My flag is firmly planted on Care-uh-mel hill. Death to all Car-mull-ites (excluding the Discalced and their brethren).

I salute your flag! Although I do enjoy it when the shoe wearing carmullites draw out the r so it sounds like the a is there, they're just not saying it.

Fun article. I always thought chocolatine was a brand of hot chocolate.

Pop is a verb. It means things. People use it to talk about non-beverages, creating potential collisions in language usage. While collisions in language happen all the time and are manageable, it's still a point against.

Coke is a horrible term to use, because Coke is a specific beverage. Use of brands for generics, like saying "Kleenex" for tissues only works when those things are interchangeable. If you ask someone for a Kleenex and they bring you a Puffs tissue you can just use that instead. You might not even notice. If you ask someone for a Coke and they bring you a Sprite you're in for a rude surprise

Soda is clearly the superior choice. The only collision is for things like Soda Water, which is just carbonated water that they use in soda, or sodium compounds in chemistry (which the majority of people don't talk about).

You have been Culturally Imperialized, by the correct and dominant Empire. You are welcome.

Direct quote from an in-law, western North Carolina, circa 2005: “what kinda coke y’all want? Sprite?”

Pop is also a noun.

I come from soda country, but I'm ok with pop or even soda pop. The only clearly wrong choice here is to call everything "Coke", for the reasons you articulate so well.

The real regional thing I grew up with is that back home, we call the things you drink water from in public "bubblers". My understanding is that Bubbler was the brand name of the first such drinking devices, and it stuck. Similarly (though less common as it got supplanted before it could stick), people will sometimes call ATMs a "TYME machine" because that was the first ATM that popped up in our area and they were ubiquitous for a while.

Coke is a horrible term to use, because Coke is a specific beverage.

Tell this to my wife, who says "pepsi-cola" instead.

... as the generic term for a fizzy drink? If so, that's wonderfully contrarian.

You are pissing on the cultural heritage of 100 million people!

I didn't do it, I swear! I smelled like that when I found it.

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