oh-shit-a-baby

[oh-shit-a-baby]

Seeing all these people on tiktok having to use digits instead of letters and typing “seggsey” to get past the app’s censors really makes me thing of Bearville.

Like, I’m not sure how many people remember Build-a-Bear Workshop’s MMORPG, but the chat function was a very open free type style (kind of like club penguin) with the exception that the censors were INSANE.

Like at first, people were just kind of substituting words like in tiktok, except you could only use words that the computer recognized as words, so alternate spellings were out of the question. Let’s take “sex” for example. As the middle school kids we were, we just swapped it with a permitted dictionary word.

Sex becomes “sat”. “I heard my parents having sat.”

But THEN the computer or whoever was monitoring an online game directed at kids starting picking up that the word was being used in certain contexts, and shut it down. After this, you couldn’t use “have” before almost any verbs without getting your message blocked as potentially sensitive.

Enter the completely useless invented particle “ds”. I don’t know why this was in the dictionary, maybe because of Nintendo, but we quickly discovered that ds was allowed almost anywhere as a minimally sensitive word. It could be thrown in to break any pattern.

“I heard my parents having sat” becomes “I heard my parents having ds sat.” Ds was a word used as a punctuation mark whose sole function was to throw off an AI’s sentence recognition. And it’s function was spread only by word of mouth from child to child for who knows how long, and accepted into the Bearville vernacular. When I was new, I even asked a few friends what it meant. Their reply:

“Ds means nothing. It’s for computer.”

I really wish I remember more of my middle school exploits on Bearville before they shut it down, or had the time and sense to study and write down some of it, because the natural state of kids when left alone in Lord of the Flies style isn’t to kill each other—it’s to adapt as a group, and to randomly ask other people if they want to be their gamer girlfriend/boyfriend.

So part of me wants to cringe when I see “seggsey”, but the anthropologist in me really wants to watch a generation create another dystopian esoteric dialect to evade our robot overlords.

[oh-shit-a-baby]

As someone who has actually studied the English language there's a common phrase about English that kinda annoys me because while it makes for a funny haha line it's such a gross oversimplification that it actually ceases to be funny. It's the one that goes "The English language is just three languages stacked on top of each other wearing a trenchcoat" or something to that effect.

I'm not going to go into detail as to why that sentence is inaccurate, just take my word for it as a person with a master's in English. I suggest we withdraw this expression from usage and replace it with the much more accurate "The English language is a dirty little slut that loves it when other languages cum big loads in it"

[oh-shit-a-baby]

[oh-shit-a-baby]

I don't think there's ever been a funnier piece of lore in a video game then the etymology of the word "gun" in FFXIV

[oh-shit-a-baby]

staying close w people long distance really is about the mundane stuff. i get texts like "made quesadillas" "spilled mop water all over the floor :(" "lady on the bus has not one not two but three tiny dogs in her purse" andits like wow. i love you more than words can express

[oh-shit-a-baby]

what do you call this genre of movie

[oh-shit-a-baby]

i have this disease called i will open your message and get distracted and forget to reply and then the notification will be gone so i will not have replied for ages and you will think i am ignoring you but. i am not. it’s incurable

[oh-shit-a-baby]

remember when everybody on this website was in high school but like now if i see somebody on here thats in high school im like jesus christ.... are u okay how is that going for you....

[oh-shit-a-baby]

Okay this is just getting funny now

[oh-shit-a-baby]

it’s quite actually devastating that you rarely can get physical copies of concert tickets these days. it’s all digital like.. where is the commemorative piece of paper i held in my sweaty little hand all night that i get to bring home and stick in my keepsakes? we are losing some of societies greatest pillars

[oh-shit-a-baby]

advice i think we should tell children is that when adults say stuff like ‘now that i’m an adult i get really excited about stuff like coffee tables and bathrooms and rugs etc’ they don’t mean ‘and now i don’t care about blorbo and squimbus from my childhood tv shows anymore’ bc your average adult still loves all the same pop culture stuff they always did; they just have a greater appreciation for the mundane as well. growing up just means you can enjoy life twice as much now. you can get really excited about a new stuffed animal AND about a new kitchen sponge. peace and love

[oh-shit-a-baby]

[oh-shit-a-baby]

[oh-shit-a-baby]

Hydraulic press vs Legos

[oh-shit-a-baby]

One of the ballsiest things Tolkien ever did was write 473k words about some hobbits called frodo, sam, merry, and pippin and then write in the appendices that their names are actually maura, ban, kali, and razal. 

[oh-shit-a-baby]

does anyone else think it’s crazy how we just casually reference “the pandemic” now. i catch someone in conversation saying “during the first quarantine…” and as comfortable as it feels to hear and say now, there’s still a twinge of like…. i cannot believe we’re using these words in real life in reference to real events. this isn’t a scifi movie this isn’t a young adult post apocalyptic novel we’re literally casually discussing a global pandemic that ravaged the entire world and it was REAL ?

[oh-shit-a-baby]