27 lines
1.7 KiB
Plaintext
27 lines
1.7 KiB
Plaintext
hacker humor
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A distinctive style of shared intellectual humor found among hackers, having
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the following marked characteristics: 1. Fascination with form-vs.-content
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jokes, paradoxes, and humor having to do with confusion of metalevels (see
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meta ). One way to make a hacker laugh: hold a red index card in front of
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him/her with GREEN written on it, or vice-versa (note, however, that this is
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funny only the first time). 2. Elaborate deadpan parodies of large
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intellectual constructs, such as specifications (see write-only memory ),
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standards documents, language descriptions (see INTERCAL ), and even entire
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scientific theories (see quantum bogodynamics , computron ). 3. Jokes that
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involve screwily precise reasoning from bizarre, ludicrous, or just grossly
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counter-intuitive premises. 4. Fascination with puns and wordplay. 5. A
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fondness for apparently mindless humor with subversive currents of
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intelligence in it for example, old Warner Brothers and Rocky Bullwinkle
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cartoons, the Marx brothers, the early B-52s, and Monty Python's Flying
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Circus. Humor that combines this trait with elements of high camp and
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slapstick is especially favored. 6. References to the symbol-object
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antinomies and associated ideas in Zen Buddhism and (less often) Taoism. See
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has the X nature , Discordianism , zen , ha ha only serious , koan. See also
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filk , retrocomputing , and the Portrait of J. Random Hacker in Appendix B.
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If you have an itchy feeling that all six of these traits are really aspects
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of one thing that is incredibly difficult to talk about exactly, you are (a)
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correct and (b) responding like a hacker. These traits are also recognizable
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(though in a less marked form) throughout science-fiction fandom.
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