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Kneecapping Barack Obama at every opportunity. | ||
I frequently have people ask me what particular terms they hear around the "blogosphere" actually mean. In order to answer these questions, I decided to create my own little reference guide that covers the most used terms. Some of these definitions were written from scratch and others were gathered from various sources. If I used another source, I included a link back so credit could be given where it was due.
Axis Of Weasels: The term "Axis of Weasels" refers to France and Germany and was popularized by this article written by Scott Ott of Scrappleface.
Blog: "A blog is defined as a Website with dated entries, usually by a single author, often accompanied by links to other blogs that the site’s editor visits on a regular basis. Think of a blog as one person’s public diary or suggestion list. Early blogs were started by Web enthusiasts who would post links to cool stuff that they found on the Internet. They added commentary. They began posting daily. They read one another’s blogs. A community culture took hold." -- Source: Jay Cross
Blogosphere: Bill Quick coined the phrase blogosphere in this post. Here's what he said, "I PROPOSE A NAME for the intellectual cyberspace we bloggers occupy: the Blogosphere. Simple enough; the root word is logos, from the Greek meaning, variously: In pre-Socratic philosophy, the principle governing the cosmos, the source of this principle, or human reasoning about the cosmos; Among the Sophists, the topics of rational argument or the arguments themselves."
Anti-Idiotarian: "Someone opposed to a whole raft of political values which are derived from a fundamentally irrational meta-context (world view). Anti-idiotarians can be found across a wide section of the political spectrum and are primarily characterized by vocal rational judgmentalism, generally hawkish sentiments and transcendent loathing of Noam Chomsky." This phrase was coined by Charles Johnson. Source: Samizdata
Clue Bat (Beating Someone With): Have you ever heard of "cluing someone in," or "giving someone a clue?" Well, this is a take-off on those phrases except that it implies that you're going to verbally berate the person involved or use a strong language in hopes of "giving them a clue."
Dead-Tree Media: Paper newspapers and magazines, also known as Old Media. Also: 'on dead trees'. Source: Samizdata
Fisking: "The term refers to Robert Fisk, a journalist who wrote some rather foolish anti-war stuff, and who in particular wrote a story in which he (1) recounted how he was beaten by some anti-American Afghan refugees, and (2) thought they were morally right for doing so. Hence many pro-war blogs -- most famously, InstaPundit -- often use the term "Fisking" figuratively to mean a thorough and forceful verbal beating of an anti-war, possibly anti-American, commentator who has richly earned this figurative beating through his words. Good Fisking tends to be (or at least aim to be) quite logical, and often quotes the other article in detail, interspersing criticisms with the original article's text." Source: The Volokh Conspiracy. By the way, here's a link to a fisking I did of the Robert Fisk article that Volokh mentions in the definition...
Idiotarian: "An advocate of irrationalist and subjectivist values that have very little reference to the workings of the real world. Idiotarians are often socialist (quintessentially Noam Chomsky), but can also be paleo-libertarian or paleo-conservative. The defining phrase of idiotarianism is "it is all the fault of the United States": this is usually applied to geopolitics but is sometimes encountered with regard to cultural issues, economic issues, environmental issues, the weather, socks lost in the laundry etc." Source: Samizdata
LIHOP: LIHOP stands for "Let it happen on purpose" and it implies that Bush knew 9/11 was coming and deliberately allowed it to happen so he could take advantage of the crisis. A variant of this is MIHOP or "made it happen on purpose."
Linkers: Blogs that focus on linking to other interesting places on the net.
Neo-Conservative: This is a frequently misused term. Here's the actual definition of the phrase, "Michael Harrington, the big-hearted socialist, coined the phrase to describe a bunch of "renegade" liberals and leftists who were moving right. It wasn't meant as a compliment. Indeed, in a very real sense, neoconservatism was from the beginning a more useful word to describe a phenomenon rather than a school of thought." Source: Jonah Goldberg. So for example, while David Horowitz and I may have fairly similar ideological beliefs, he is a neo-Conservative while I am not. That's because Horowitz was once a lefty and I never was.
Paleoconservatives: "Also known as the Old Right. They don't much like being called paleocons because they believe they are the keepers of the True Faith of conservatism. These are the guys who have very interesting arguments about why Lincoln was a tyrant; believe that citizens should consider themselves Kentuckians or Texans first and Americans second; and revere people like Charles Lindbergh and Robert Taft. While the ideas which define paleoconservatism have been around for generations, the term itself became popular as the neoconservatives grew in influence in the 1970s and 1980s. Pat Buchanan is the only nationally recognized champion of paleoconservatism." Source: Jonah Goldberg. I'd also add that paleo-Conservatives are isolationists. They're generally suspicious of free trade, are largely against the war on terrorism, and detest foreign entanglements. In many respects, they're right out of the 1930's school of Conservatism.
The Professor: This refers to Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit, who is also called the blogfather on occasion. Getting "Instablasted" and the term "Instalanche" refer to the flood of traffic that comes from getting linked on Instapundit.
The Tin-Foil Hat Club: Some people believe tinfoil keeps the government/aliens/psychics/etc. from being able to read their thoughts. Saying someone is part of the "tin-foil hat" club implies that they're a conspiracy freak.
Thinkers: Blogs that focus on writing original content instead of mainly focusing on linking to other pages.
Troll: "1. [From the Usenet group alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on Usenet designed to attract predictable responses or flames; or, the post itself. Derives from the phrase "trolling for newbies" which in turn comes from mainstream "trolling", a style of fishing in which one trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't fall for the joke, you get to be in on it. See also YHBT.
2. An individual who chronically trolls in sense 1; regularly posts specious arguments, flames or personal attacks to a newsgroup, discussion list, or in email for no other purpose than to annoy someone or disrupt a discussion. Trolls are recognizable by the fact that the have no real interest in learning about the topic at hand - they simply want to utter flame bait. Like the ugly creatures they are named after, they exhibit no redeeming characteristics, and as such, they are recognized as a lower form of life on the net, as in, "Oh, ignore him, he's just a troll." Source: The Jargon Dictionary
Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: This term was popularized by Hillary Clinton's claim that a "vast right-wing conspiracy" was targeting her husband. This was so over the top that a lot of Conservatives picked up on it and started using the term to poke fun at Hillary and some of the more paranoid members of the left.
Warblog: "Any blog largely or primarily dedicated to coverage of terrorism, the war or terrorism, and conflict in the Middle East, regardless of when it was started." Source: Samizdata
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