Who starts these things? Think it’s fascinating how certain memes take hold. I work with clients who are desperate for their marketing messages to “go viral” They very rarely do. Dollar Shave, Old Spice and the John Lewis ads are rare exceptions. And the more they become “a thing”, they less they become something meaningful. As people can smell a shill a mile off.
Anyway, right here, on The Afterword blog where did acronyms like GLW, TMFTL and HJH orginate? And what about phrases like “As usual the answer is ..(David Bowie?) or “Afterword T-Shirt. I’ll take that in a black, XL” and variants, how did they emerge?
Answers on a postcard. There’s another one from long ago.
I am pretty sure that Sheev on the Word blog regularly coined the phrase “as usual, the answer is David Bowie.”
One of my favourites (which nobody actually uses) is: Gong is my yardstick..
I suppose that one person starts to use, someone else jumps on the bandwagon, and bob’s your uncle.
I like the versatile ones like “hitmakers”. e.g. the Tobergraphic Oceans Hitmakers.
How one achieves the magic of a meme? There’s the rub.
The “Hitmakers” one came from Mark Ellen on the podcast. Black is right, the Bowie one came from Sheev.
Pretty sure HJH came from a newspaper article posted on the Word by me and someone else simultaneously – which is always the sign of a good meme.
I also lay claim to being the midwife if not the mother of YDFMD which has fallen out of use a bit these days, and a very specific use of ‘fuckwits’.
It’s all mememe with me.
What is YDFMD?
YDFMD = You Don’t Fool Me Danny (Baker) … reference to him lurking on the old site under a pseudonym.
I seem to remember Mark Ellen mentioning in a podcast at some point that the phrase had appeared in some Daily Mail article and it had flourished because it was too funny not to keep, as a result of its utter squareness (Daddy-o)
Ah the blessed Ellen, an expert in all matters jolly. As for Sheev, don’t remember seeing his name here. I kind of like that Bowie thing, has the ring of truth in a lot of areas. Growing up, Bowie was kind of our North Star, our Beatles if you will through the 70s and 80s. The one constant through Prog, Punk, New Wave, New Romantic and Electronica.
Tumfuttle is pure Peel.
I claim credit for “Afterword T-Shirt”. I’ve been responsible for many advances here, all unheralded and unsung. It was I who lobbied (successfully) for the baby-changing facilities in the sidebar at the Old Place. Just leave your baby there and someone would swap it for their own. I also started the whole “where’s me galoshes missus!” catch phrase which threatened by sheer volume of usage to overbalance the blog entirely back in that heady summer of ’12. And I can now reveal that both “Ianess” and “Dogfacedboy” are entirely my own inventions, conceived during a creative writing workshop I ran for Bedford City Council. Sometimes I feel as if my characters – very sketchy in those early days – have assumed a “life of their own” such is their integration into the warp and weft of this thriving online community! And that little covered wagon that goes under the sink? That’s mine.
YDFMB
Oh look here it is again. I wonder wot it means?
I’ve always felt that “Afterword t-shirt” was a mere refinement (by which I mean “theft”) of the previous “new Afterword tagline” meme. J’accuse!
You may feel whatever you wish to feel, Mr Little, within reason and the scope of the law. I have never seen the rather clumsy term “new Afterword tagline” in use here or on previous sites. Its very lack of ubiquity renders moot any argument you think you may have. I’d love to continue this discussion but I have to go and comb the tassels on my loafers.
You can’t dust for memes.
Amusingly, a work colleague of mine recently embarrassed himself by pronouncing it ‘mee mee’ during an office discussion.
I feel your pain H. P.. The history books are written by the whiners and the truly creative powerhouses are left neglected on some dusty library shelf.
How true.
Those words are.
Even. Today.
The short lines.
And the gaps.
Make you sound profound, HP.
Is this one of those Me Me things?
It’s me as Kaisfatdad. We all have those moments. Sad. Funny. So come on Afterworders! let’s be having thos clips of songs about shelves, in all their glorious miscellany! I was dropping the kids off at the pool yesterday when Olaf, our trusty yet challenged handyman, was whistling a merry tune that stayed in my head all day!
Turns out it was from a Finnish TV advertisement.
About shelves.
Fascinating stuff! And the Afterword is agog at this very entertaining thread started by someone I can’t remember byt I wish I’d thought of it.
Can’t win them all!
Bastards.
My second favourite Afterword meme is “OOAA”, which allows the user to simultaneously deliver their opinion, close down the conversation and take the moral high ground. I love it.
OOAA
I know what it means but I always, always say in my head “Ooh Ooh Ah Ah” like a chimp.
Yes! Or like Kevin Rowland in that song of his where they also do it.
I coined the rarely used so not really a meme at all meme *pushes sandwich to one side* to denote comedic revulsion. So if you could all start using it I’d really appreciate it. FFS.
Way to sprinkle magic dust over the thread there, MC .
I thought it was just me who sings ‘I keep searching, searching’ in a Brummie-flavoured falsetto after every OOAA. Tell Me When My Light Turns Green, I think
Mauritz, I’m an admirer of your *PSTOS* meme and have employed it myself.
Hilarious Jim! Not to be confused with a we we!
*whispers* What is ‘TMFTL’?
I’ve been dying to ask but didn’t want to start an embarrassing thread. If I bury the question here, no-one will see, right?
Two (or three) more from them later.
It comes from John Peel, who used to have bands in session on his show, and is used whenever someone uses a word or phrase which sounds like it could be the name of a Peel-type band.
Ah yes; I knew the phrase from Peel but didn’t realise it had been abbreviated. Thank you. *feels relieved, slightly stupid*
Yes sorry, I believe I may have taught my grandmother to suck eggs a bit here.
FRSS
Another for the set.
Three More From Them Later – a witty aside which references a phrase in a previous post which could easily be a band name like ‘bien pensant peasants’
“Three more from later” is surely a phrase known and beloved by the man in the street in the UK. If I drop it into my cheery banter with the local butcher, will he not smile and give me a knowing wink?
And as for “fades in slowly” surely that has reached every echelon of British society?
I can just imagine Her Maj cheekily slipping that one into conversation during breakfast time at Buck House.
Did we make up “I’m here all week – try the veal”? I tried it on a friend of mine and he had no idea what I was talking about.
“I’m here all week.” is a fairly widespread comedy phrase for people to say after making a weak joke.
I prefer, ” I feng yew”
‘I’m here all week’ sounds like a Barry Cryer-ism.
IMHO. . .
See above. Locust and I have the correct answer.
I recently heard that phrase used by Saint Mark Ellen in an ancient Word podcast. Although he may well have got it from somewhere else previously.
The “I’m here all week, try the veal” line comes from Jewish supper clubs in the Catskills. It later migrated to Las Vegas. It’s as old as the hills (SWIDT?) and to claim credit for it here is nonsense.
Holy smokes, the very same minute! 🙂
Isn´t the “here all week/try the veal” schtick used a lot by American stand up comics?
I think it’s an old thing that comes from the Catskills hotels, the so called “Borstj-belt” (not sure how you spell that in English).
But I don’t have any proof.
I’m fairly sure that ‘try the veal’ is trademark us. ‘I’ll get my coat’ is more ubiquitous. YDFMD (and no, I have no idea what it means)
I know it as You Don’t Fool Me Danny Baker. At the old place he was known to post under a pseudonym. Dunno who started it though.
Wrongity wrong is used to this day at Dyson Towers.
Which?
I’ll get my coat was used a lot in the Fast Show.
As an aside, @duco01 uses “More tea vicar?” to devastating comic effect when we are out knocking back gallons of beer.
Hey HP, can you make my contributions a bit more lively then?
Unfortunately no, Ian. I have you as “advanced, forthright and signifficant”.
HJH. Didn’t that come from the Beeb website- ‘the Hey Jude hit makers’?
No, as someone points out above, it was from a newspaper article (the previous comment suggests the Mail, I’m pretty sure it was the Express, but whatever).
I think – and I’m happy to be corrected – that I invented YDFMD, and I was certainly present when TMFTL plopped wetly onto the delivery room floor at St. Meme’s.
But then, I’m bloody marvellous.
DBYBHCTTD* Bob!
*(Don’t bang your big head coming through the door)
Too late. Tripped over me nob as well.
Anyone trying to copyright Yurt/Crumhorns/SFBWTC’s will be immediately hurded on to the Godessless tundra before the unspeakable for them commences.
Peace & Love
I believe Dan posted in the old place using the handle bodhisattva, which only kind of came out by accident after he had his diagnosis
Hey Jude Hitmakers: wasn’t that actually Van Morrison’s phrase, quoted in said BBC article.
Wrongity wrong was a Valparaiso, A, response to something, possibly Rory Gallaghesque.
Are these memes? Strictly speaking I thought these were merely in-jokes?
A good question. This tries to give answer.
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080930084714AAQ6YVy
Think we’re good
meme
miːm/Submit
noun
noun: meme; plural noun: memes
1.
an element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation or other non-genetic means.
2.
an image, video, piece of text, etc., typically humorous in nature, that is copied and spread rapidly by Internet users, often with slight variations.
HP. ‘Any signifficance in the use of two f’s in ‘significant’?
As regards the veal, it’s the Borscht Belt in the Catskills.
It’s a Molesworth quote, as any fule kno. Thanks for the Catskills info, though, you are reliably the third to post it.
http://i1060.photobucket.com/albums/t449/GCU_Grey_Area/latin%20verb%20conjugator_zpsqlqir3mv.jpg
Mr Area! Always a delight, never a chore.
Check yr personal massages, Mr Area.
So solly, pee HP (thai in-joke). Man above coulden spell Borrsssccchhhttt. Gas o’ wye to calm down?
Some of the schtick is from stuff people here said and the schtick stuck, a lot of it comes from The Word and the Word Podcasts – lagely due to Mark Ellen who seems to have an ear for little catchphrases and memes – I’m sure he’d attribute some to the late Tom Hibbert and whoever else was in his orbit.
To go back to the OP – I remember David Hepworth using FPO to describe his wife (Fun Prevention Officer), possibly inspired by Jerry Leadbetter in the Good Life. But I prefer GLW (Good Lady Wife) because my GLW is more of a Barbara than a Margo.
I think FPO was Mark Ellen and GLW was Heppo.
I dislike the term FPO, which I find too laddish and bantery. I use the ‘The Light’ when referring to my significant other, which I think I pinched from @disappointmentbob (the term, not The Light, neither in a romantic nor Promethean sense).
I quite like FPO. I just assume that there is usually one in every marriage; it doesn’t have to be the wife.
It’s basically “the practical one”, isn’t it?
It comes across to me as belittling, and doesn’t sound like any relationship I’d want to be involved in. It’s just, well, a bit ‘off’ to my ears; the sort of thing that would get a laugh at the nineteenth hole, a shibboleth which would mark the speaker as someone whom I would want to avoid.
IIRC, FPO was coined by a friend of Ellen’s who told the story on a podcast.
Ah, I wish I could claim credit for The Light. Sheev is – again – the man on that one.
Try the veal. That’s from the mountainous region (the name of which escapes me) in southern New York state isn’t it?
Good shout, Mauritz! The Adirondacks, if memory serves. Popular destination resort for the Native American community.
Adirondacks! Of course! As in the famous lyric, “Met her on a Monday and my heart stood still, Adironda-a-acks, Adirondacks.” Always wondered what they were on about there, but then that’s the glorious stupid world of pop we inhabit, eh?
*tamps dottle from pipe on Mauritz’s head* Good Lord yes! The tales we could tell, eh, Mauritz! Those wild n’ wacky-baccy ‘sixties! What was that someone said about if you were there you could … if you couldn’t … if you couldn’t remem …. anyway! I was always a big fan of dear, dear Doris Day myself. WHIPCRACKAWAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY!!!! That’s rock n’ roll right there! And you know what? *pauses to suck ineffectually at pipe* You know what? You tell kids today, the ungrateful little cunts, you tell ’em that INNNN THE MOUUUUUNNNNNTAIN GREENERY *whispers* where there’s *building volume* LOTS OF SCEEEEEENERRRYYYYYYYY … you tell ’em … hang on … me catheter’s burst …
Whilst a burst catheter can be inconvenient, it’s the burst bag that’s the bummer. (That’s burst catheter bag. A burst bag bag, cripes, how?)
What are you on about Retro?