This is a situation where googlefight doesn't help, because "hte" is an advance. So don't be the horse and buggy guy dissing the Model-T, if you know what I mean.
The Googlefight is not decisive--well, it doesn't provide any evidence whatsoever--but there's no reason whatsoever to think that Freakgirl isn't simply the oldster mangling teh hip slang. Get rid o' that inferiority complex, O-man!
The Urban Dictionary is inconclusive. It's a new entry, so there's reason to think it's in fact an innovation, but the definition itself isn't very substantive.
Personally, I think it's a slang hoax, created to suss out the oldsters who are trying to be hip. Like "shizzle my nizzle" susses out white people who are trying to black. (That's really the only explanation I can come up with for the "shizzle" shite.)
Nothing about freakgirl's post suggests that she deliberately wrote "hte" because it's at the vanguard of cooldom or for any other reason. It's possible that it, like "teh" once was itself, was merely a typo.
Well, I still think your reflexive grasping after the perceived new and hip in this fashion is crazy in someone of your advanced age, and proof of how desperately, desperately out of touch you are.
See, Ben, if you wait for the pattern to become clear, you're already behind the curve. I'm trying to catch this wave, and if all the little Unfogged Burkettes are going to stay behind on the safe shores of "teh," I'll go alone.
And anyway, should the etymology of hte ever be unraveled, I feel confident it won't involve 13 year olds screaming in IRC channels, and therefore won't have any true legitimacy. Teh was a Slashdot cliche long before the larger blogosphere picked it up.
Wolfson nailed it in 23 -- if coolness isn't effortless, you should really give it up completely. Pick up 'cool' things as they amuse you, but not because you think you're fooling anyone about your personal hipness level.
Ok, seriously, forget about me, because I'm not about to be cool, but y'all are wrong about trying to be cool. Very few people are cool in the sui generis way you're describing. More often, people care about being cool, find the already cool people, ingratiate themselves, adopt the habits of the cool, and suddenly, they're one of the cool kids. Once you're a cool kid, all you have to do is keep an eye on one of those rare sui generis cool folks, follow their lead, and you can stay cool.
Agreed. This is basically the idea that drives About A Boy, IIRC. And if Nick Hornby says it, you know it's true.
I think what Wolfson, et. al's comments reflect is our ability to cocoon as we age. No doubt Wolfson is the leader of a very tough gang of grammarians at UofC, but pointing out the proper use of the pluperfect is not "cool" everywhere.
Which is to say, I take my previous comment about the shirt back, and ask you to keep striving to be cool.
This is basically the idea that drives About A Boy, IIRC.
Yes and no. He sang cool version of "Killing Me Softly." So he was expressing his true self, and yet doing it with enough style/eye for potential ridicule that it worked out.
As I understand the dynamics of 'cool' (this would be as a lifelong distant observer - I've never approached coolness in person) you need to either be effortlessly cool yourself such that things are cool because you say they are, or you need to be accepted by a group led by such an effortlessly cool person. Assuming you can't pull off the first, and you don't seem to have a group of cool kids specifically in mind to suck up to for acceptance, I think that shuts down all the available avenues for coolness.
There's a joke somewhere in the hte/teh question in relation to the linking through html versus linking via personal info, but I'm too drunk to piece it together.
Have the courage of your convictions, dude! We're right and she's wrong.
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 10:59 AM
This is a situation where googlefight doesn't help, because "hte" is an advance. So don't be the horse and buggy guy dissing the Model-T, if you know what I mean.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:01 AM
Come on. "hte" is an abortion.
Matt's argument is weak (weak!) because the hte-partisan will just say that it confirms that "hte" is underground and not a sell out as is "teh".
Next you'll fall for some line about how "oh noze" is the new "oh noes".
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:02 AM
The Googlefight is not decisive--well, it doesn't provide any evidence whatsoever--but there's no reason whatsoever to think that Freakgirl isn't simply the oldster mangling teh hip slang. Get rid o' that inferiority complex, O-man!
Posted by Matt Weiner | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:14 AM
The Urban Dictionary is inconclusive. It's a new entry, so there's reason to think it's in fact an innovation, but the definition itself isn't very substantive.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:19 AM
Wait, who's a teenage?
Posted by Matthew Yglesias | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:19 AM
I was thinking of L.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:22 AM
I'm 19.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:22 AM
Personally, I think it's a slang hoax, created to suss out the oldsters who are trying to be hip. Like "shizzle my nizzle" susses out white people who are trying to black. (That's really the only explanation I can come up with for the "shizzle" shite.)
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:23 AM
Ogged, the urban dictionary entry claims it's an abbreviation for "hard to explain". What's lacking about that?
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:23 AM
Nice try, Ben. Twice.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:24 AM
No, just once.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:24 AM
Huh.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:26 AM
So, according to the Urban Dictionary, Freakgirl is just wrong.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:26 AM
But the Urban Dictionary often has conflicting definitions. In fact, I could just go in and add "hte: update of 'teh'."
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:28 AM
Are you trying to get to 100 by yourself? Please delete this comment if that's the case.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:29 AM
Nothing about freakgirl's post suggests that she deliberately wrote "hte" because it's at the vanguard of cooldom or for any other reason. It's possible that it, like "teh" once was itself, was merely a typo.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:29 AM
I'm thinking out loud, Timbot.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:30 AM
But ogged. One isolated instance is not a good reason to believe that it's an update of "teh". You are being crazy.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:30 AM
I don't think it's a typo, Ben. But that's just my high opinion of FG talking. She drop in eventually, I expect.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:31 AM
Well, I still think your reflexive grasping after the perceived new and hip in this fashion is crazy in someone of your advanced age, and proof of how desperately, desperately out of touch you are.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:33 AM
See, Ben, if you wait for the pattern to become clear, you're already behind the curve. I'm trying to catch this wave, and if all the little Unfogged Burkettes are going to stay behind on the safe shores of "teh," I'll go alone.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:33 AM
I'm trying to catch this wave
Trying isn't cool, ogged.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:34 AM
Trying is the new cool? Maybe?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:35 AM
You are being crazy.
I agree. "Teh" makes more intuitive sense. Or at least could possibly be pronounced. "Hte" seems doomed to failure, to me.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 11:53 AM
It looks more like a misspelling of "hate."
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 12:00 PM
"Hte" seems doomed to failure, to me.
I agree. Pronounceability is essential.
And anyway, should the etymology of hte ever be unraveled, I feel confident it won't involve 13 year olds screaming in IRC channels, and therefore won't have any true legitimacy. Teh was a Slashdot cliche long before the larger blogosphere picked it up.
Posted by tom | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 12:02 PM
Take it from the teenager, Ogged: she's wrong. Not that you're not teh unhip.
Posted by L. | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 12:38 PM
Wolfson nailed it in 23 -- if coolness isn't effortless, you should really give it up completely. Pick up 'cool' things as they amuse you, but not because you think you're fooling anyone about your personal hipness level.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 12:47 PM
I'm feeling the love y'all, thanks.
What if I start a zealous and stubborn campaing to make "hte" the most popular word in all the universe!!? Potentially cool?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 12:58 PM
zealous and stubborn
No.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 1:00 PM
Also, buy a proper button-down shirt, ogged. Nobody can stop time.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 1:16 PM
30: maybe, but not in the way you're going for, I think.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 1:40 PM
What way then?
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 1:41 PM
I gotta side with LizardBreath, who I hope is not at work. If there is any trying involved it ain't cool. You can't campaign cool. You must be cool.
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 1:43 PM
This was pretty cool, after all.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 1:43 PM
Ohmigod.
"Be cool, man."
That takes me back - why do I hear "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds?"
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 1:45 PM
36- But it seems like Ogged is the Times, in this context. Which means the rest of us should wear tee shirts saying "hte".
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 1:51 PM
This is teh most uncool post, evar.
Posted by Michael | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 1:52 PM
38--true.
Posted by ben wolfson | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 2:03 PM
38-I've already got mine on, don't you?
Posted by Tripp | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 2:07 PM
Ok, seriously, forget about me, because I'm not about to be cool, but y'all are wrong about trying to be cool. Very few people are cool in the sui generis way you're describing. More often, people care about being cool, find the already cool people, ingratiate themselves, adopt the habits of the cool, and suddenly, they're one of the cool kids. Once you're a cool kid, all you have to do is keep an eye on one of those rare sui generis cool folks, follow their lead, and you can stay cool.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 3:32 PM
Possibly, but if you appear slavish about it, no. You have to have some inner poise to be truly cool.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 3:37 PM
Sure, but I can tell you guys about my plan, can't I?
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 3:38 PM
We're like your band geek friends that you're going to ditch when the cool kids invite you to join them?
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 3:39 PM
Agreed. This is basically the idea that drives About A Boy, IIRC. And if Nick Hornby says it, you know it's true.
I think what Wolfson, et. al's comments reflect is our ability to cocoon as we age. No doubt Wolfson is the leader of a very tough gang of grammarians at UofC, but pointing out the proper use of the pluperfect is not "cool" everywhere.
Which is to say, I take my previous comment about the shirt back, and ask you to keep striving to be cool.
Posted by SomeCallMeTim | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 3:40 PM
ac, exactly. But I might then become your in to the cool kids.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 3:45 PM
This is basically the idea that drives About A Boy, IIRC.
Yes and no. He sang cool version of "Killing Me Softly." So he was expressing his true self, and yet doing it with enough style/eye for potential ridicule that it worked out.
Posted by ac | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 3:45 PM
As I understand the dynamics of 'cool' (this would be as a lifelong distant observer - I've never approached coolness in person) you need to either be effortlessly cool yourself such that things are cool because you say they are, or you need to be accepted by a group led by such an effortlessly cool person. Assuming you can't pull off the first, and you don't seem to have a group of cool kids specifically in mind to suck up to for acceptance, I think that shuts down all the available avenues for coolness.
Posted by LizardBreath | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 4:28 PM
Ogged is the Times
"All hte news that's hip to print."
Posted by eb | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 4:49 PM
Ogged is hip—like a popotamus.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 5:21 PM
Or like an occratic oath?
Posted by Tarrou | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 6:49 PM
Hip like displasia.
The avant-garde hippopotamus is at my link. No joke.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 7:21 PM
Or maybe at this link.
Posted by Anonymous | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 7:23 PM
Or maybe this one. I'm sobering up, so my accuracy is declining.
Posted by John Emerson | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 7:24 PM
You cannot fool me, John Emerson. I need only hold my computer over a burning candle, and your "secret" links will be revealed.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 9:41 PM
Click his name, SB.
Posted by ogged | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 9:43 PM
Hey, look at that. Thanks, ogged.
Posted by Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 9:56 PM
There's a joke somewhere in the hte/teh question in relation to the linking through html versus linking via personal info, but I'm too drunk to piece it together.
Posted by Joe Drymala | Link to this comment | 06-25-05 10:00 PM
I like "teh" because it is pronouncable and it sounds funny. Plus I am old. "Teh" is teh beez neez.
Posted by Joe O | Link to this comment | 06-26-05 7:37 PM