I made this list not out of snark or spite, but because it has rained all day, rained, even, on me as I took my walk, which I cut short, and because I have been making notes for months, and now seemed as good a time as any.
I had a long intro for this, hearkening back to grad school and people using terms they thought others knew and probably others did know but maybe not, and argots, and random musings, but I'll spare you.
These are words or terms I've seen in my many months here that I didn't know, or did know but didn't put together with their meaning. I am linking specific posts to where they were used, though these I found by doing a hard-search and are not necessarily the posts where I first saw the word/term. Any mistakes or misrepresentations are my fault. I hope this is helpful to others among us who are sometimes as confused as I am. Probably many of you know all these and must imagine me very old to post this. So be it.
If you recognize yourself as the author, I am not intending to be snide, or criticize your post. You just got lucky.
Edit: Many of these are probably going to need to be updated and tweaked. Feel free to add comments.
Let's start with the biggie:
asabiyyah: a concept of social solidarity with an emphasis on unity, group consciousness, and a sense of shared purpose and social cohesion.
Bagdhad Bob: When war propaganda becomes so out of touch with reality it turns comedic and achieves the opposite of the desired effect. It is said such propaganda is "Baghdad Bobbed" exactly at the moment when this threshold is crossed. From Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf, Iraqi War Information Minister in 2003.
Baumol’s Cost Disease: From the late William Baumol, NYU’s Stern School of Business. used to explain why prices for the services offered by people-dependent professions with low productivity growth—such as (arguably) education, health care, and the arts—keep going up, even though the amount of goods and services each worker in those industries generates hasn’t necessarily done the same.
"This is Baumol's cost disease in a nutshell."
Note: @jeroboam helpfully linked a Wiki page in this instance.
Chesterton’s fence: rule of thumb that suggests that you should never destroy a fence, change a rule, or do away with a tradition until you understand why it's there in the first place
consent à outrance: From the French. Suggests an agreement or consent that is given fully and without reservation, sometimes to the point of being excessive or without consideration of the consequences.
CRT: Critical Race Theory.
DRM: (I saw it used as a verb but have no link because I can no longer find it). Digital Righs Management. Presumably restricting the ways in which content (music, whatever) can be used, copied, or distributed.
Dunbar-limited world: Reference to Robin Dunbar, biological anthropologist. The “Dunbar Number” is the upper limit on the number of social relationships a human can effectively manage. (I believe it is supposed to be 150.)
Einsatzgruppen: : From the German. Actually, a German word. These were “mobile killing units,” best known for their role in the murder of Jews in mass shooting operations during the Holocaust.
Euthyphro: : A “straight-thinker.” A combination of εὐθύς (euthys), which means straight or direct and φρονέω (phroneô) which means to think or to reason.
NB: Alternate definition here.
Frasurbane: portmanteau of the sitcom Frasier and urbane, is the wonderfully specific aesthetic of late '90s interiors of people who want to come across as sophisticated and worldly.
HBD: If you do not know what this means, that’s weird, because it is almost a theme here. Human Biodiversity. Some here swear by its truth, others do not swear by it but expect it’s real, others think it’s dubious. Too many instances to choose from.
lolcow : A person whose eccentric or foolish behaviour can be exploited to amuse onlookers.
idpol: abbreviation based on identity politics is politics based on a particular identity, such as race, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, social background, caste, etc.
If-by-whiskey: If-by-whiskey is a type of argument that supports both sides of a topic by employing terminology that is selectively emotionally sensitive. Originates from a speech given by Mississippi state representative Noah S. "Soggy" Sweat, Jr. in 1952.
Kolmogorov Complicity: Originated with Scott Alexander from his blog. Reference to the Soviet mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov. The idea of navigating or conforming to oppressive orthodoxies while still trying to contribute to the growth of knowledge and truth discreetly.
libfem: Stands for liberal feminist, also known as intersectional feminism or third wave feminism. A societal ideology focused on power dynamics and microlabels. a main branch of feminism defined by its focus on achieving gender equality through political and legal reform within the framework of liberal democracy and informed by a human rights perspective.
“The far end of libfem, maybe.”
MGTOW: an acronym for Men Going Their Own Way, an online social movement and backlash to feminism where men renounce interactions with women and seek to define and live out their masculinity on their own terms.
Orbanization: : (maybe) the process of adopting political strategies and governance methods that are similar to those of Viktor Orbán, the Prime Minister of Hungary. Orbán's tenure has been characterized by a centralization of power, control over media, erosion of checks and balances within government structures, and a move towards what is sometimes called "illiberal democracy."
Overton window: an approach to identifying the ideas that define the spectrum of acceptability of governmental policies. It says politicians can act only within the acceptable range. Shifting the Overton window involves proponents of policies outside the window persuading the public to expand the window.
“Transgender politics wasn’t in the Overton window at this point.”
Pascal’s Wager: the argument that it is in one's rational self-interest to act as if God exists, since the infinite punishments of hell, provided they have a positive probability, however small, outweigh any countervailing advantage.
"Pascal's wager is terrible because infinite rewards break game theory."
Pill colors: Red, Blue, Black
- Red Pill: In the context of online communities, particularly those focused on gender and relationships, "Red Pill" refers to the belief that men have been socially disadvantaged and that conventional beliefs about gender, attraction, and social interaction are misleading or false. It often involves the idea that men need to become aware of and confront these supposed harsh realities to improve their own lives. The term is frequently used in men's rights and certain dating advice communities.
- lue Pill: The "Blue Pill" is often posited as the opposite of the "Red Pill." It represents adherence to conventional or mainstream beliefs about gender, relationships, and society. In communities that use these terms, taking the "Blue Pill" means accepting societal norms and beliefs without questioning them, often portrayed as living in blissful ignorance.
- lack Pill: The "Black Pill" takes a more fatalistic and often nihilistic viewpoint compared to the Red Pill. It's associated with a belief that certain unchangeable traits (like physical appearance, height, etc.) predominantly determine one's success in areas like dating and social interaction. Black Pill ideology is often linked with extreme pessimism, defeatism, and a belief that systemic changes or personal improvements are largely futile.
PMC : Professional/Managerial Class
purity spiral: a sociological theory which argues for the existence of a form of groupthink in which it becomes more beneficial to hold certain views than to not hold them, and more extreme views are rewarded while expressing doubt, nuance, or moderation is punished
quant: short for quantitative analyst.
A hard search for this term provided too many instances of other words using these five letters, e.g. quantify, etc. and I didn’t have the patience to keep looking. But I’ve seen this term used and you will, too, if you keep reading this forum.
quokka: I have no idea what this means except a small marsupial. Help. Thank you @naraburns. The origin is here. From what I can gather a quokka is a kind of gentle-dispositioned person, innocent of nature, who is a bit of a nerd and wants to discuss things in good faith. Often applicable to certain autists. It is not a pejorative term. Edit: Maybe it is.
"Can you imagine a bunch of quokkas going about EA and Skynet every two days on the forum?"
Russell conjugation: a rhetorical technique used to create an intrinsic bias towards or against a piece of information.
shape-rotator: Someone with high mathematical and technical skills, often portrayed as rivals to the wordcels (who have stronger language and verbal skills)
“I thought we were shape rotators?”
soyjak: (I still only vaguely understand this.) An online image of an emasculate man, often with an excited expression, with an art style based upon the original wojak.
"This looks more like an excuse to draw your enemies as the soyjak and yourself as the, uh, tiger." Edit: Despite repeated attempts, I cannot get this link to work.
stochastic: having a random probability distribution or pattern that may be analysed statistically but may not be predicted precisely.
technocrat: an adherent to technocracy, or the government or control of society or industry by an elite of technical experts as opposed to professional politicians.
thot: From “That Ho Over There.” A woman who has (or is presumed to have, for whatever reason) many casual sexual encounters or relationships. Likewise, e-thot is a woman who makes money online from male (or predominantly male) audiences, by doing whatever for cash.
"I've seen sponsored ads (with the "ad" tag) for individual OnlyFans thots."
Third World-ism: a political concept and ideology that emerged in the late 1940s or early 1950s during the Cold War and tried to generate unity among the nations that did not want to take sides between the United States and the Soviet Union.
Noe: various users question the meaning and use of this term.
tradfem: a portmanteau of "traditional feminism" in reference to belief that adherence traditional feminine gender roles are better or more correct, especially those held by conservative Christian Americans, especially WASPs. Edit: Also a play on "radfem" or radical feminist. Thank you again, @naraburns.
“The Harrington and the other tradfems are hard to place on the left-right axis.”
Varg: I still don’t know what this means. I found various meanings of varg but none are satisfactory. Help.
Von Neumann: synonymous with “really big-brained person” as far as I can tell. Refers to John Von Neumann, a computer guy. Notably a “Von Neumann probe” would be a spacecraft capable of replicating itself. Edit: As I said above, misrepresentations are my fault.
Westphalian: the concept of state sovereignty and the idea that each state has exclusive sovereignty over its territory and domestic affairs, free from external interference. From a series of treaties in 1648. We also have a member with this as part of his username.
Wignat "wigger nationalist" and was originally used to describe lower class, violent, and unattractive neo Nazis that were willing to engage in street violence and unabashed Nazism with the use of swastikas and other symbols.
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Notes -
Success daughter vs Failson is a predominant dynamic in the pmc world, and definitive of much of modern life.
I’d say faildaughters are almost as common in real life, it’s more of a general phenomenon of downward mobility that affects many children of the PMC who don’t get on the right ladder (good college, well-paid law/finance/tech/medicine job) by their late teens and early twenties.
I’d say it runs more in families. You could have two senior 60 year old investment bankers, with three kids (say two sons and a daughter) each, and one of them will have a doctor, a corporate lawyer and a banker, and the other will have a failed artist, a NEET and a school teacher or academic or something. Often it seems arbitrary.
I cannot name any society which even has a shared concept of the 'faildaughter', at least not in the modern West. That is because the factor of personal responsibility is absent. Societies share the concept of the failson because there's consensus that the failson's failings are his own, and bears responsibility for them. When a daughter fails in her romantic or professional life, to the extent that society even dares to acknowledge that women do 'fail', it's generally seen not as her failing, but a problem caused by men in general and by a patriarchal society. She didn't fail; shitty men and a shitty society failed her.
Yeah, men (sons) have the burden of performance. Women (daughters) cannot fail; they can only be failed.
Just existing can be enough for a daughter to retain her father's love, not so much for a son: "Sons are expected to have agency, force of will, ambition. They fail... For Tony Soprano, Bobby Bacala, Johnny Sacs: their girls are their princesses. Forever. Even as they grow up and go to college or get married — they’re daddy’s little girl. If they do something career focused, it’s window dressing or status points... But nevertheless [sons are] expected to win. Daughters are not. Daughters are only there to be loved."
Sure, there are some failure conditions that would apply to both sons and daughters (e.g., becoming a street junkie), and some of the most devastating ways a parental heart can be broken is by way of a daughter to her father, but the general set of failure conditions for a son is much larger than those for a daughter. If you're an M&A Managing Director at an investment bank, your son who became a school teacher is a failson. Your daughter who became a school teacher is just a daughter. Failson is much more of a thing than faildaughter, just as #GirlPower is much more of a thing than #GuyPower, #GirlBoss more of a thing than #GuyBoss.
This reminds me of @Folamh3's comment from a few months ago, although I would add a woman/daughter being pleasant, agreeable, talkative, and amiable can be optional in such circumstances:
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Hag, wine aunt, leftover women/sheng nu, there are lots of terms for faildaughters, it’s just that they encompass primarily lack of romantic success rather than career success. But these are increasingly tied together because of assortative mating anyway, so I think the term still applies.
"Spinster"?
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I'm fairly sure the phrase 'leftover woman' isn't used outside China.
Even in China, it's not really a thing anymore. Instead they're having big problems with men unable to find wives, so the "bride price" that a man is expected to pay the bride's family is going up and up.
I'd be sort of surprised myself if 'leftover women', female hypergamy notwithstanding, were a significant social phenomenon in a country with a lopsided sex ratio favoring women.
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Yes, but the gender dynamics at play make the Failson--SuccessDaughter dynamic much more distinct and important, as @RenOS points out, than three kids with one successful son and one fuckup, or a weirdo daughter and a successful son. Everyone involved tends to be much more confused by a Failson than a fail daughter. I don't tend to see it run in families as often as you do, for whatever reason, but I do agree that there are families with fuckups of either gender.
The historical expectation has always been for families to invest in the high success of their son, while their daughters get secondary importance with a focus on stability (ie marrying well or entering socially acceptable but low-variance careers like teaching). The reverse of this confuses everyone. It's natural, in a gendered dynamic, for the daughter to be lesser than the brother, to look up to the brother. She can still have valuable roles in the family and in life without being the more successful. The reverse isn't as true, the failson doesn't have a natural role in the life of the family. For fictional examples: Succession throughout the dynamics around Shiv, Kendall and Tom are jealous of her success and don't know what to do with themselves if they aren't capable of exceeding her in money and power and deliver various angry soliloquies on the topic; Downton Abbey or Pride and Prejudice where it's accepted that at least one daughter will stay home to take care of the parents.
In my own family, I see this dynamic with my in-laws. My wife is much more successful than her brother, and it eats at him. He is, frankly, a better homemaker than she is, he's a fantastic cook. But it's unnatural for the daughter to say "OMG sorry I'm just blowing in the day before, I have so much going on at work, my caseload is crushing me..." and the son to spend all day in the kitchen working on his sauces. Both suffer from the self-esteem hit: my wife from feeling unfeminine and uncaring for not being able to cook, my brother-in-law from being unmasculine for not earning money and for having the time to cook.
It might be that I run in much more traditional-gendered circles than you do.
Thanks for your reply. I’d say that increasingly in ‘my circles’ I think the failson is kind of an accepted part of the family landscape. I do think there’s big variation based on class nuance; being a failson of a centimillionaire or billionaire still makes you a rich young guy with a nice apartment and tons of time to go to the gym or hit on women at bars without ever worrying about money provided your dad doesn’t go apeshit and fully cut you off. This is low status for his parents among their friends but is obviously arguably a much better and more fulfilled life for the young man than spending a hundred hours a week at his desk at Goldman because Dad really wants his boy to follow him into private equity.
I’d say the more archetypal failson I knew grew up upper-middle class, went to a good private school in Manhattan, failed to get into an elite college but went somewhere still objectively fine, graduated but didn’t get a good job and felt themselves above, say, the back office or mid/lower tier white collar work (in part also because their friends would make fun of them). Then they move back in with family in Manhattan or get their limited support to move into deep Brooklyn with roommates and spend ages 21-27 bumming around, working at failed low-tier (ie not backed by good venture capital) startups in “sales” or “content” or something vague that isn’t technical, living essentially off the couple thousand dollars a month that Dad gives them because he feels like a bad parent. May have a longstanding coke / ket problem, definitely a stoner, has a significant inferiority complex relative to the guys his age he knew who succeeded on the ‘right’ path.
Honestly though a lot of these guys do eventually pull it off. The commanding heights of biglaw/consulting/ib are probably closed off to them but many will eventually get an OK white collar job, climb through the ranks, are personable enough. They’ll be fine at 45 and when their parents die the couple million they inherit will provide for a comfortable later life and pay for a home outright unless they’re still a fiend at that age. This is the kind of ‘soft’ downward mobility I’m talking about, it’s not that your son becomes a crackhead or even a manual laborer, they’re just slowing falling through the ranks of the PMC and their kids will probably go to public school.
The faildaughter is a tougher situation. Neither the beautiful daughter who pursues a highly unprofitable career as a gallery assistant or jewelry designer before marrying a wealthy Swiss businessman’s hotel owner son nor the plainer but highly ambitious daughter who becomes a successful McKinsey consultant and makes partner young are ‘faildaughters’, obviously, whatever the parents’ thoughts on the potential (for career success and/or family life) they might have had. Women’s downward mobility is increasingly a product of assortative marriage. 90 years ago a wealthy woman who became a teacher would likely marry a man of her (birth) class, for example. Today she’s much more likely to marry another teacher or some other male profession of similar status. Doctors marry doctors now, not nurses.
So the faildaughter kind of bums around, similarly to the man in his twenties, gets tattoos, smokes a lot of weed, and then at 31 gets engaged to a hot line cook or a fellow teacher or an adjunct prof she meets at a poetry recital or whatever. And her Dad knows, in this case too, that both his daughter and his future son-in-law are going to be living off him. The difference is that the failson could still pull off an upset in the 30-40 range and make something of his life, whereas if the faildaughter isn’t either dating the right men or on a great career track by 25 (or both), it’s typically over and she’s going to have a kid with the loser and then you better hope you’re around to spend quality time with your grandkids and have the money to pay for their education.
I’d also add that increasingly just being a moderately pretty young woman isn’t enough to marry into the same PMC circles you grew up in. You either need a good job, family money, or to be very outgoing and personable. The shy girls I went to school with who didn’t do so well professionally mostly date/marry down even if they’re pretty.
Fair enough. I think you're applying it very specifically to the sociological context of the 1%, I'm thinking of the phenomenon more broadly as "Brothers who are less successful than their sisters along traditional Masculine lines of money and career success." This is a pretty unique phenomenon, as far as I know, in all of human history: never have daughters outperformed sons en masse at achieving money and power on an individual basis. This dynamic has always been reversed. We are now seeing a world where it occurs, not just occasionally, but frequently, possibly even in the majority of cases. We haven't formed the cultural programming for this.
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Families invest in the high success of their son because, unlike his sister, he is expected to become a family head and breadwinner. Investing in their daughter was unnecessary as she is still capable of filling her future expected role without it.
Sure. Which is what makes it hurt so bad when he fails to become a breadwinner, despite needing to, while she succeeds in doing so, despite not needing to.
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Kind of, but women overall seem to fail more gently. For example, even if a women does not have a lot of raw talent to become an actually good artist, she will often be good enough at navigating social environments that she will find some kind of safety net, such as becoming an art teacher, working in some sort of subsidized gallery, or the archetypical husband paying the bills. A guy in the same situation is much more likely to be a complete trainwreck imo. Partially this is just a result of the expected higher male variability.
In my opinion I’ve seen downward mobility affect both sexes. It’s true that the woman has the safety valve of marrying someone of her birth class, but this is also becoming rarer with assortative mating/dating, and it happens increasingly with men too (eg. of my banker friends many are dating men who make a lot less than them).
Admittedly you almost surely have a better personal insight into the upper echelons of western society than most of us do, including me.
But at least in academia I get the the impression that there's plenty (obv not everyone, but a lot) of women who just flat-out refuse to marry down, and most statistics on the topic I can find seem to imply the same. It might have to do with that for jobs that are considered status-equivalent, academia pays pretty bad, while banking is at the other end of that spectrum.
I agree that a woman academic is unlikely to ‘date down’ by marrying a blue collar laborer (even if he makes much more than her). But she might date a teacher, and nobody in my office would be hugely surprised to hear a banker say she’s dating an academic or something even if he makes 1/5th what she does.
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It seems like being cute and from a wealthy background isn’t enough to land a rich husband anymore, you’re right, and that’s because it’s no longer a social necessity for wealthy men to have wives who come from a similar class background.
Wealthy men can acceptably marry much poorer women, quite easily, and they usually choose to do so.
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