Categories: Uncategorized

The Devil’s Dictionary, version 2.0

First, there was Amborse Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary, and later, Stan Kelley-Bootle’s computer-related twist, The Devil’s DP Dictionary. Now, Greg Knauss has created The Devil’s Dictionary 2.0, a lovely skewering of terms you’ve heard in the blogosphere (he even dumps on the term blogosphere!). He seems to be adding new entries whenever the inspiration strikes.

Some examples:

Anti-Idiotarian, noun: Idiot. “That Eric Raymond is quite an anti-idiotarian.”

BigCo, noun: A successful software company.

blogosphere, noun: An poisonous environment of methane, self-satisfaction and other hot gasses. “The only creatures that can survive in the blogosphere are low-order molds, able to feed off the waste of others.”

flash mob, noun: An impromptu gathering, organized by means of electronic communication, of the unemployed.

This one is my favourite:

social software, noun: Any arbitrary collection of algorithms, protocols and metadata that allows friendless agoraphobics to pretend otherwise. “I’m having trouble deciding which node in my social software network I’m going to ask to the e-prom.”

Recommended Reading

Here’s the etymology of the non-word Anti-Idiotarian.

Dave Winer likes to throw around the term BigCo, which is a conglomeration of Big and Company.

Joey deVilla

View Comments

  • That,, "idiotarian"-stuff is just wrong. On many points it's just a "if you don't think the US never does anything wrong, you're an idiot". Idiot if you belong to soemthing with "socialist" etc in it?

    Yeah, for being a land that has been ruled by these idiots called socialists for a long long time, Sweden is not doing bad: http://www.ccsd.ca/pubs/2002/olympic/indicators.htm ... and obviously this is what the Swedish population wants, since the socialist/left wing block wins, with 83% voters.

    ...

Recent Posts

Let the ritual humilation begin!

There’s a good chance you’ve seen this photo by now: Pictured seated from left to…

1 day ago

Sunday picdump for November 17, 2024

Here’s a collection of interesting memes, pictures, an cartoons floating around the internet that I…

3 days ago

U.S. post-election post #7: Don’t worry, it’ll trickle down…

Tap to see the source. This is yesterday’s daily New Yorker cartoon, created by Brendan…

1 week ago

U.S. post-election post #6: One key election is still undecided…

C’mon, let it not be Asians this time. Last time was pretty bad. Here’s the…

1 week ago

U.S. post-election post #5: Come bend the arc with me!

Jon Stewart’s right, and we’ve been here before. Where we are now, I’ve been before…

1 week ago