One of the particularly confusing sites I know of is dlisted.com. Consider the following post about the Jonas brother, Kevin,
The Zac Hanson of the Jonas Brothers has been super-committed to his transition
from “wholesome fresh-faced Disney twink” to “Dayum Daddy, you got a license for those
guns?” ever since posting his first shirtless beefcake pic to Instagram last year, and it looks like
he’s checked off the next box on his to-do list by shaving his head.
The first obvious issue is the length of the sentence. So many words are used to convey the message. Some slang is used in the sentence. The word "twink" for example is defined by urbandictionary.com as,
An attractive, boyish-looking, young gay man. The stereotypical twink is 18-22, slender with little or no body hair, often blonde, dresses in club wear even at 10:00 AM, and is not particularly intelligent. A twink is the gay answer to the blonde bimbo cheerleader."
Next, is the word dayum, which I did not know is a slangy way to say damn. According to urbandictionary.com, "an explative, not unlike whoa. It is a more emphasized version of the word "damn" when it is used in the same way."
Once I looked up those words I understood that this sentence means to say that Kevin Jonas is working on building his physique.
Link to the post: http://dlisted.com/2014/06/21/open-post-hosted-by-a-jacked-up-nick-jonas/
Indeed! I had to google that picture, and he does actually look pretty buff.
ReplyDeleteThat is a lot of work to decode a single message. Those words are completely new to me as well. When I saw "twink" I thought it was a shortened version of the pastry Twinkie. Not that that would fit in the sentence, but that was what first came to mind. Also, is it bad that I have no clue who Zac Hanson is?
ReplyDeleteYes, it IS bad! ;)
DeleteRemember MMMBop? Zac Hanson is the youngest member of the band Hanson. The author meant that Kevan, like Zac, is the youngest member of his respective band.
Oh my god, it made my morning that you posted about dlisted. I agree that the sentence you write about is lengthy, and that he uses language that might be unknown to people of certain backgrounds.
ReplyDeleteAs a gay man, however, I can tell you that "twink" is part of gay vernacular. I'd challenge anyone to find more than a handful of gay men who don't know what this word means, and who haven't used it before. So the issue for readers who don't know that word wouldn't necessarily be one of grammar. :)
Also, the author of dlisted writes in such a way on purpose. He's wordy, he's circular, and he stuffs as much sexual/drawn out commentary/insults as he can into each and every one of his sentences.
Even when talking about his own website, the author has the same tone. Here's his "About" section on the dlisted website:
"Dlisted.com was started as The D-List on January 23, 2005. It soon changed its name when Kathy Griffin threatened to kill our asses. Since then we’ve been kicking ass and taking names or is it licking ass and being lame? Its also updated like every five seconds since Michael K has no fucking life. Like honestly we should look into that shit."
Amazing.