HURF DURF CURIOSITY SEEKER

I can't remember exactly but I believe it started in a metatalk thread having something to do with racism. People started appending their statements with [NOT RACIST] and it went from there. I'd find the thread but I'm short on time.

And frankly, I'll be glad when people stop using that joke...about 2 years from now, probably.

Isn't the original use of it "[NOT RACIST]", immediately following some sort of comment interpretable as racist?

(On preview, reading puke & cry's comment: This [NOT RACIST], it vibrates?)

This comment from stavros is the origin.

Oh man, I forgot how awesome that thread was.

Interesting how it's morphed into being bracketed rather than parenthetical [NOT PROOFREADIST].

Curious that it's gone from parens to square brackets as the joke picked up meme steam.

OH GOD DAMN YOU RALSTON

That thread is awesome.

Now would somebody explain "hurf durf" to this clueless MeCha'er? (Weird, atmospheric sort of laugh, as Nelson's is in The Simpsons, perhaps?) Thx in advance.

Are online environments somehow especially conducive to beating jokes into the ground? Is it the lack of instantaneous feedback, or the way that sarcasm and nuance and tone and whatnot are harder to read? Or is it all in my head?

Are online environments somehow especially conducive to beating jokes into the ground?

This in-joke, it vibrates?

Now would somebody explain "hurf durf" to this clueless MeCha'er? (Weird, atmospheric sort of laugh, as Nelson's is in The Simpsons, perhaps?)

Though apparently it predates mefi, this is the most famous mefi use, mentioned in a cortex song.

If you ever get bored, look into the history of UN Owen.

PaxDigita: Hurf Durf

OH GOD DAMN YOU CAREY

Great comment from the OP in that thread:

I just woke up to pee and get a glass of water and I decided to check in on my question... I see that it has degenerated into name calling. Does that mean I win the internets?

I think it does!

Box, I get kinda fascinated by in-jokes because they're a feature of almost every community, online or meatspace, work, recreational, or familial. Folklorists study them a lot because they are a means of bonding a group and establishing norms and shared culture. (Looking for a good example of this, I found a very good entry on family folklore about a scholar who organizes it like this:

Folklorist William Bascom (1965) identifies four functions of folklore that also work in the family folk group. He asserts that folklore serves to (1) amuse, (2) validate culture, (3) educate, and (4) maintain conformity.

I think this is the same reason they pop up in online communities; the stronger the desire for true community and the more consistent the participant pool, the more injokes you'll get. The medium can be different online than in RL (inline GIFs, for instance, are hard to work into third-shift ER conversations...) but the functions look mostly the same.

What confuses me about HURF DURF: How do you pronounce it? How is it supposed to sound? Nelson's laugh is a great cruel snigge, but it's more of a HNYEAAH-HNYEAAH.

Hurf Durf Butter Eater was the self description of the notorious U.N. Owen when she was complaining about how people called her fat when it wasn't her fault she was allergic to exercise. Which may not have been in the linked thread, because the linked thread is the wondrous eternal begging thread.

Damn. Serve me right for taking a phone call while posting. Priorities, MGL. Priorities.

One of cortex's citations for HURF DURF (in the notes on the 88 lines song) is a picture of me!

Miko, I'll record my interpretation when I get home, if I can remember to.

It'll be creative commons licensed so anyone will be free to include it in their hip new mashups.

Also, it's weird seeing my last name on the internet.

Also, it's weird seeing my last name on the internet.

Oops, is that ok? Your profile is on the internet too...but maybe it's less googlely?

I think the trick to saying "Hurf Durf Butter Eater" is to make your face big and goofy, open your mouth wide and swing your arms while you're saying it.

As a related aside: When I was at summer camp, I once bet $5 that I could eat an entire stick of butter. I was wrong.

No worries danostuporstar, I just hadn't seen anyone use it before. (Plus it reminds me of gym class where the teacher would refer to me by my last name, as that was what was written on our shirts).

drezdn: one summer at my summer camp, there was a bit of an underground fad for eating contests. One really big kid decided he could top them all by eating 40 chicken nuggets and drinking 1 gallon of milk.

The fallout was pretty bad.

OH GOD DAMN YOU PISCOPO

Miko: You make it sound like gravity did all the work!

Also, "The fallout was pretty bad" is my new favorite euphemism for ... well, you know.

"Hey, Joe, what'd you have for lunch today?"
"Taco Bell ... the fallout was pretty bad."

Are online environments somehow especially conducive to beating jokes into the ground?

Yep. My I present The Injoke Lifecycle?

1. Impetus. Someone intentionally or inadvertently introduces a catch phrase.

2. Elevation. Enough people find the initial use(s) funny that it gets repeated a fair bit, and becomes visibly recognized as an injoke by the larger crowd.

3. Emulation. A new person learns about a joke, enjoys the idea behind it, and repeats it. A bit of feedback to the Elevation stage here.

4. Exhaustion. Everybody knows it, everybody's tired of it, and it dies a quiet, sad death as something new is swapped in.

For small groups—your family, friends, direct peers at work—the time to elevation is nil, the time to emulation likewise. The tradition is essentially oral: the only way it propagates is through speech acts by the folks involved. There aren't many people to whom the joke can spread, and exhaustion is a phase usually reached quickly and more or less simultaneously by unspoken consensus of the small group.

Online it's completely different. You have a written record, so a reader can discover a joke well after the initial impetus or heyday; it's a much larger group in most cases (certainly so for e.g. mefi or slashdot or fark), and so there's a much broader collection of potential emulators; consequently, exhaustion is not met by neat unspoken consensus but by literal browbeating rebukes by the exhausted to the still joyfully elevating/emulating. Things are never really completely exhausted, and even the closest you can get is long in the coming.

One does not simply walk into Morder in-joke exhaustion.

You know what's funny? Monkeys are funny.

Thanks, Miko and cortex!

Aw, the whole U.N. Owen debacle made me sad. Even though she pretty much brought the collective ridicule of MeFi upon herself.

And I totally read the [not -IST] thing incorrectly -- I thought it had something to do with the -ist family of blogs! (Gothamist, Bostonist, etc.)

*slaps self upside head*

An excellent analysis, cortex. Thesis in the making! I'd add:

Scale is a factor. In circles larger than a family or office, particularly ones which are organized around cohesive tradition (such as the aforementioned summer camp environment) emulation can go on much longer before exhaustion is reached. I've seen some of them endure for 20 years or so now and still be chuckle-worthy.

Then, there's also a phase beyond exhaustion, in which the joke is trotted out in a mocking fashion, layered with irony, to suggest that only a doofus doesn't know the joke is played out or wants so badly to be part of the community that they're missing the subtleties of the cycle. Some jokes can then live on in this ironic resuscitation phase until they become genuinely 'funny again.' David Letterman has built a career on this.

If they don't become funny again, they can sometimes lose their humor value but live on as just an expression, a shorthand.

To me, part of the point of In Jokes seems to be a way of showing belonging with in the community, to quickly establish that you're not a n00b.

By now there are probably people posting "Does it vibrate?" without knowing the origin of the phrase or "we have cameras" etc, but do it because they see it subconsciously as a way of fitting in, and think they get it.

Also, they become a wink and nod secret between people in the know, like how I imagine geeks used to know they were among their own when they would quote Monty Python.

With my High School friends, we made up a person named Norman Dukes (a phrase my history teacher had mentioned that sounded like someone's name) and took it so far as to almost get Norman Dukes into our yearbook.

The last time I got to thank someone in an album, I made sure to thank Norman Dukes.

≡ Click to see image ≡

≡ Click to see image ≡

Sorry, cortex, but I see little evidence that an in-joke usually "dies a quiet, sad death as something new is swapped in." Instead I see phase 4 as Backlash, when those who have tired of the joke first begin ridiculing those who still enjoy it. If the Ironic phase noted by Miko begins before this phase has thoroughly run its course, then the catchphrase is in danger of changing from "injoke" to "fighting words".

Uh-oh. This is sure to wendell.

Your profile is on the internet too...but maybe it's less googlely?

Is it on the internet? I'd say more the bunny intranet. At least, it's only visible to those who are logged in.

HURF DURF BUTTER EATERS