Help me be a cunning linguist.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Internet VFW > Help me be a cunning linguist.

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

So I'm the wife of a regular here (out yourself if you want or not, babe) and I'm taking a course in sociolinguistics.

I'm looking for info for my final paper. This research will probably not be for the greater good because it'll never get published because I'm an undergrad, so your responses are a favor to me, and I thank you in advance.

I'm writing about small internet communities and their rules for politeness, especially communities that use very different standards than everyday spoken English. Basically, that means that I'm interested in the way you bastards talk to one another in the foulest of tones while still maintaining serious support when it matters most. I appreciate and value everyone's personal stories, but I'm not so much looking to collect combat stories. Instead, I want to know how having this forum with its particular rules and customs works for you. Is it the respect for service? the irreverence? the space to tell your own story? Something else? What do you like about the spoken and unspoken rules of GIP as opposed to other spaces for servicemembers and vets?

Feel free to ask me questions, roast me for being a dependa, whatever. I'd love to have some dialogue with a few of you, or just a couple of comments.

Thanks again, and thank you for your service.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2019 21:43

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 00:11

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

A Bad Poster posted:

No, thank you for paying your taxes.

This is the only veteran oriented place online or off that I use, mainly because almost all of the rest of them are poisonous to anyone who isn't a zealot for the United States and its policies. It's nice to have people with one shared background that are mostly civil to each other, and I think that comes from the way this site works in general. The pay wall keeps the crazies out, and the threat of having to spend more money if you're a poo poo head keeps most people on good behavior.

Thanks, and thank you for speaking the to truth of the paywall. It makes a difference.

# ¿ Apr 14, 2019 22:26

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

bulletsponge13 posted:

I think it helps we are fairly self regulating. If you break a taboo, you get chastized socially and a warning. At first (unless something super heinous), it comes as little jokes and barbs, maintaining the lighter social situation.
When it becomes repeated is where it get interesting. Because first you are approached with some poo poo slinging, but it comes off almost jovial. Next comes the 'Maybe we didn't get what you meant'- most of the time, the group allows them to explain, because we all have been clumsy with words. Then comes debate, then varying levels of social punishment, which could end up being ban/probate, but more often comes in the form of ridicule and running them out for being poo poo heads.

I'm sure that wasn't as coherent as I wanted, and I missed some stuff, but hey, data.

What are some of the taboos that are not such a big deal? What are the rules that are more strict?

# ¿ Apr 15, 2019 00:24

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

The Valley Stared posted:

Interesting questions. I've really only started to post in GiP in the past two years. For me, the reason I started posting more frequently was because there were people here that could understand what I'd gone through who'd be sympathetic and understanding without being condescending about it. There's also the unspoken, but always present, support for one another. Someone can be having a rough time-- or do something really stupid--and sure, you'll have the people that make a quip about it, but there's almost always someone here who will provide advice or help you out in some way.

We're not here to circle jerk about our service, and there isn't that chuddiness that's often associated with other service member groups. Isn't the unofficial forum motto "I am deeply conflicted about my service" or something like that? If nothing else, we tend to say it a lot, and I think that that's a healthy way of looking at what we do/did. There are certainly aspects of our service that all of us are conflicted about or feel was wrong, and we're not about to sugar coat that with pretty pictures of the flag and weeping eagles.

I agree with bulletsponge13 about the self regulation and taboos being a big role too as to why we tend to stick around. Yes, you can have your jokes or jabs, but if you cross a line, you'll know it from other members. Sometimes the probations are in good fun too because you didn't post a dog picture for your fifth post or some poo poo like that.

If dog or cat pics are on offer, I definitely expect them, btw.

Thanks a ton for your perspective, may I have your permission to quote you in my paper? I'll just use your username, or if you want, another anonymous name.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2019 00:31

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

Cenen posted:

There was an ancient post way back when this forum first started where someone summed it up pretty well about what makes this place different. I remember some of it.

There are military sites where people demand to be called by former rank and if you were or are lower ranking then them they treat you like poo poo. If you are DEP or even just interested forget it they treat you like less than poo poo.

They will absolutely go off on you and hurl insults at you if you aren�t active and question your competency if you ask any question while active.

Way less full blown racists here than Facebook. A lot less weird macho savage poo poo about how if you weren�t a marine rifleman in Falujah during a certain timespan your service was meaningless and a waste of taxpayer money. Flip side of that is no one here does the weird overcompensation of how their service in the Navy reserves from 85-89 was pure national defense and they don�t have wasted money/blood on their hands.

Outsiders are welcome here and through the power of the paywall most are respectful and genuinely curious. A lot less weird 14 year olds screaming about how the power of Jesus will guide them to becoming the ultimate SEAL green beret sniper while making GBS threads on people who are actually in but in jobs that are beneath them.

It really is just a generally much more chill and relaxed atmosphere here where you can bust jokes and get questions answered at the same time without some weirdo misogynist screaming about how babies conceived in the dorms should be aborted because that is something I actually saw today on Facebook.

That's a great way of putting it. Shall I quote you as "Cenen" or something anonymous?

# ¿ Apr 15, 2019 04:00

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

ManMythLegend posted:

I think it's more of a shibboleth.

If I can manage to work in "Suck My Dick From The Back" as a 'Shibboleth' I feel like I should get some sort of extra credit....

# ¿ Apr 15, 2019 04:06

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

Awesome stuff. Do you feel like your linguistic choices (e.g. the poo poo you say) are informed more by SA, more by the military, or a combination of both? Or does it sort of depend on how long you've been a goon/servicemember? What are some of your favorite turns or phrase and where do they come from?

# ¿ Apr 15, 2019 22:19

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

Kawasaki Nun posted:

I don't think a lot of people look to this forum as an audit on decency. There have been enough scandals here that something awful is definitely not an authority on moral matters.

I'm not trying to provide any insight into decency or a lack thereof. (I think you're a decent bunch of goons, though.) I guess I can clarify a little more about what I'm looking at when I approach this forum for this particular research paper. My goal is to demonstrate how some internet forums have their own "politeness" rules that drastically contradict standard American English forms of written and verbal politeness, to the point where speech that would be considered very rude out of context is actually appropriate and even respectful as part of in-group communication. This is not a new idea, or a particularly radical one, but it's a fun one to document in the wild. Basically I'm saying that GIP (and some subreddits and FB- you're not my only research topic) is a community with internally consistent rules and a wonderful variety of colorful expressions that have real meaning to the people using them and act as a stand-in for some aspects of speech that can be difficult to express in writing. I chose GIP as one forum to focus on because I'm a goon myself and because you guys have a great ability to talk sensitively about important topics in one thread while gleefully bashing each other in the next. It shows a real sophistication that is difficult to bring across in written language, which is why I personally love internet culture so much.

Sorry if that's a little too much detail! In essence, don't think of yourselves as being under a microscope and don't think I'm trying to extrapolate anything about military culture in general from this- I just like the way you talk to each other.

# ¿ Apr 15, 2019 23:29

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

Damnit, now I want to refocus my entire paper on veteran communities. You guys are awesome.

# ¿ Apr 16, 2019 18:38

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

bulletsponge13 posted:

You are a skilcraft pen with a face.

Friend, I hope you work for more than ten seconds at a time and don't fall apart at the slightest provocation.

I've been purging those things from my household for over a decade and they still keep popping up like a bad penny.

# ¿ Apr 17, 2019 02:17

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

Carnival Rider posted:

I never really post much, I�m quiet in general and never feel like I have much to offer (also I�m still in and don�t want to get doxxed) but I�ve been lurking gip since before it was permanent.

I think this is one of the best military forums I�ve seen, everyone is pretty close and watches out for each other. There are a lot out there that poo poo on people based on rank or branch or even deployments. People might get ribbed on but they are still accepted unless they do something really dumb and see themselves out.

I think a big part of that is the volunteer mod team, back when LF kept trying to invade the mods were always on top of things and did their best to keep things civil or boot out people that refused. That and the pay wall kept out most of the idiots.

That and being real about everything. Most places are rah rah go airborne but people here give out good information and tell the truth, not just kool aid.

I'm not familiar with LF- what happened there?

Also, I'm curious about how Goons here express themselves in ways they might not express themselves verbally in person to other vets. Why is it easier to make a connection in a written medium than a spoken one? What information are you able to convey here that you can't convey face to face?

I like the idea that the forum has grown with you guys- what do you think has allowed that? Why didn't you just outgrow the forum and move on to something else? What allowed you to adapt and still appeal to younger members?

Finally, I consulted my spouse about the Dick Book, and if you meant the compendium of latrine graffiti I would very much like to see that! Anyone have a link?

# ¿ Apr 18, 2019 22:22

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

Fister Roboto posted:

LF (Laissez's Faire) was a FYAD-lite subforum of D&D, kind of like CSPAM now, except way more into edgelord maoist communism. Every now and then they'd come in here try to troll people.

Eventually they got shut down because someone joked about plotting to kill the president (Obama at the time), and lowtax got a visit from the secret service.

Ah, right. I remember now. Back in those days I never left GWS.

My teacher likes to say "context is everything" and I'm beginning to see how that really applies here. Each thread is its own sub-context with its own rules in the greater context of GIP as a whole. I wonder how this kind of contextual self-policing (e.g. punishing anyone who fucks with the get help thread while allowing near-anarchy in the drunk thread) creates a different sort of community than someplace like FB, which has a set of sitewide community guidelines that largely fail to enforce functional discussion?

# ¿ Apr 20, 2019 02:54

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

Does anyone know how old GIP is as a subforum? It'll let me scroll back to May 2014, but I know the forum is older than that.

Wroughtirony fucked around with this message at 17:53 on Apr 21, 2019

# ¿ Apr 21, 2019 17:50

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

Thanks. I'm having fun writing the history/background part of the paper. Explaining what SA is to an academic audience is a pretty hilarious endeavor.

# ¿ Apr 21, 2019 18:47

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

ManMythLegend posted:

You absolutely need an archives account. Because, in my opinion at least, the old A/T thread is closer to Current Day GiP then early GiP is so if you want to be able to draw narrative lines for the forum's culture you really need to start back there.

A lot of people seem to forget that early GiP was the punchline of an FYAD/LF joke which is part of the reason why Grover was the first "mod" (though his "authorities" were closer to an IK's than a mod's and his official title was like "Chief Senior Master Sargent" or something like that).

You're right, and I will definitely get Archives. However, as much as I would love to write an anthropological history of GIP (I say that with zero sarcasm, btw- it would beat the hell out of most of the other coursework I'm doing atm) I'm going to have to keep things under ten pages and focused on the sociolinguistic side of things when it comes to the forum as it is now. The history section is just going to boil down to "in 1999, Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka launched a comedy website. It has forums, which evolved from x to y over the last two decades and are now [statistics]. GIP started out as a thread in A/T in [year] and became its own subforum in late 2009(?) Though moderation styles and content have varied over the years, at present it's shockingly functional compared to the oozing racist pustules that are most other online forums for similar communities, especially Facebook. " Then I'll talk in specifics about the ways in which you guys talk to each other and use (here comes the jargon) positive and negative politeness and especially (what many would see as) impoliteness to preserve both positive and negative face while enforcing spoken and unspoken community rules. Then I'll bash the gently caress out of Facebook for a few pages and hopefully tie it all together.

As far as quoting from the forums, my plan is to credit usernames (with permission) when you guys are answering my questions directly, quote anonymously ("One user posted...") from threads that I observe, and only speak in generalities about anything sensitive, like the get help thread.

It's not going to be the most rigorous piece of scholarship in the world, but the professor is giving me a lot of latitude in terms of just writing about interesting poo poo that has to do with sociolinguistics and pragmatics.

# ¿ Apr 22, 2019 00:12

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

Flikken posted:

This forum has had the most chill atmosphere I have found on the internet. The Discord is also good OP if you want to join that and watch our banter by the minute, it has sub channels to cover a ton of stuff that even GIP doesn't cover.

And we play left 4 dead 2 and are terrible at it, you should join us.

Thanks a ton (really) for the invite but the GIP Discord is basically Mr. W's man cave/safe space and I'd be intruding. Bad enough I'm using his GI Bill to finance an English degree...

# ¿ Apr 23, 2019 02:03

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

So I got Archives and I've been digging through A/T, but the threads are sorted by kill date, so I have something of a needle in a haystack situation going on to find the military thread(s). Anyone have any clever ideas? It's literally for one whole sentence in the background section of my paper, so anyone's best guess as to when the A/T thread formed into some semblance of a community would be fine, too. Also, for those of you who might be curious- GIP as a forum dates back to July, 2008.

Paper is coming along well. The first third is finished. I just need to chain myself to my keyboard and bang out the rest by Wednesday. The only obstacles in my way are being busy all day Saturday and Sunday, having another term paper to finish by Thursday and the fact that I'm coming down with a really bad cold. If I can get all that under control then the only things I have to worry about for the rest of the semester are the final exams I have been too busy to study for.

# ¿ Apr 26, 2019 04:31

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

So the paper is done. I ended up writing just about GIP because by the time I got down to explaining what a Lowtax was, I was in too deep to give FB a similar treatment without running onto 20 pages. I did not get to use nearly as many of the awesome quotes as you guys gave me as I wanted. If anyone wants to read the whole bloody thing I'll send it to you.

tl;dr: GIP is an example of a hybrid online community that uses novel applications of written language to meet the needs of its users in ways that face-to-face communities cannot.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2019 22:31

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

colachute posted:

You�ve got me curious.

RCfnova @gmail

Sent. Also, you're quoted.

"I post in gip because I, for all intents and purposes, try not to interact with anything military related in my day-to-day. [�] This forum lets me interact with people who understand what it�s like to be in the military, and understand how that can really gently caress with you. While I try to avoid it as much as possible in my life outside of the forums, it�s still something I want to be able to reach out to if necessary. Plus, sometimes I just get lonely and there are a bunch of assholes here I can talk to."

colachute. �Help me be a cunning linguist� The Something Awful Forums. 16 Apr. 2019. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3887132&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=1. Accessed 30 Apr. 2019.

# ¿ May 1, 2019 02:04

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

ASAPI: I especially wanted to use this: "As for the forum adapting. The military NEVER changes. The younger, newer guys may have fancier toys/weapons, but the problems are still the same. Ancient Roman soldiers were drawing dicks on the shitter walls. The guys in Valley Forge were likely bitching about fire watch. The dude killing a Nazi with a shovel was bitching about how bad chow was. That's how we stay "relevant", the military NEVER changes." If it didn't kind of contradict the whole premise of my paper I would have ended with it.

Cenen: I tried to fit your quotes in too. A lot of what you said helped me focus my research. It just didn't end up working well in context.

Kawasaki Nun: Your words helped a lot, and helped me refine my focus, especially your urge to be understood.

Sacrist65: You shared a lot of real poo poo that was beyond my scope. Thanks for pulling no punches and telling me how it is.

The rest of you: Thanks for contributing. I know that putting yourselves out there is an effort. Thanks for believing in me and trusting me with your stories. I know it's just an undergrad paper but your cooperation means a ton to me.

# ¿ May 1, 2019 02:55

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

A Bad Poster posted:

Glad to help! Hope you get a good mark.

We read each other's papers in class today and while some were very good there were enough awful ones and enough no-shows to class that I'm pretty sure I don't have anything to worry about. One paper (about the difference between Chinese and American pragmatics) contained the sentence "The Japanese started World War II when they dropped an atomic bomb on Pearl Harbor."

Now I just have to ace the final on Monday and catch up on a bunch of other work I've been putting off... One more week.

# ¿ May 1, 2019 19:23

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

ASAPI posted:

That's pretty cool actually, I never thought that I would even be considered as a potential quote in an academic paper. Now I'm going to be all full of myself for a day or so.

I actually did quote you and your words were very useful to me! "I think our interactions have a hierarchy for statements. Our get help thread is untouchable, everyone knows that is NOT the place to poo poo post. It might be a by product of our service. Everyone of us have been in situations where we had to go from "gently caress off" mode to "get poo poo done now" mode at the flip of a switch. We just organically applied that mentality to the various threads to various degrees." (ASAPI)

ASAPI. �Help me be a cunning linguist� The Something Awful Forums. 20 Apr. 2019. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3887132&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=2. Accessed 30 Apr. 2019.

I just wasn't able to work in the bit about the military never changing, which bums me out to no end.

# ¿ May 2, 2019 02:31

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

bulletsponge13 posted:

I do have to admit, I need to take more care with my typing- I shouldn't have (sic) four times in one sentence.

I felt bad including it because your meaning was clear, but that's MLA for ya.

# ¿ May 2, 2019 02:57

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

The Valley Stared posted:

Just finished reading the paper, and it was very well done. Again, thank you for thinking that we're an interesting enough group of people to write about.

I found it interesting that you mentioned that women are under represented in the forum (to be clear, I agree that this does appear to be the case) and that we skew towards the GWoT generation. When you were conducting research for this and looking at other communities, did they tend to steer older, like first Gulf War or late Cold War era?

My prospectus for the paper was to compare the overall official and unofficial moderation styles of SA as a whole, Reddit, and Facebook and talk about how (im)politeness played out in ways that were similar and dissimilar to spoken American English. I obviously focused it down a little... So basically I didn't really do a survey of vet communities online. I chose to write about GIP because I was already familiar with SA's culture, you guys were actually willing to talk to me, and the real-world military connection bolsters my argument about online communities becoming increasingly hybridized with offline life.

I mentioned the demographics as a hedge against anyone drawing broad conclusions about all vets from my descriptions of GIP.

# ¿ May 3, 2019 16:04

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

Soulex posted:

Can i read it?

sure just give me an email address.

# ¿ May 5, 2019 01:38

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

55 points out of 55, YAY!

Depending on how badly everyone else bombed the final, I might just get away with an A in the class!

Thanks, goons!

# ¿ May 6, 2019 16:55

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# ¿ May 15, 2024 00:11

Wroughtirony: May 14, 2007

The Valley Stared posted:

Just finished reading the paper, and it was very well done. Again, thank you for thinking that we're an interesting enough group of people to write about.

I found it interesting that you mentioned that women are under represented in the forum (to be clear, I agree that this does appear to be the case) and that we skew towards the GWoT generation. When you were conducting research for this and looking at other communities, did they tend to steer older, like first Gulf War or late Cold War era?

Another reply to this, now that it's been graded:

My professor did pick up on the gender thing, and his question was that since a lot of "coarse language" is gender marked (men generally cuss more than women in the US) did the anonymity of GIP allow for more female Gippers to adopt typically male-coded language, and if so, why?

Without conducting a demographic study of GIP there's no way of knowing the percentage of women. But I would wager that the women vets/servicemembers that do post here are probably influenced more by military culture than anonymity in the way they speak.

More interesting stuff to think about.

# ¿ May 7, 2019 19:46

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