Have the courage of your convictions, dude! We're right and she's wrong.
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.
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".
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.)
Ogged, the urban dictionary entry claims it's an abbreviation for "hard to explain". What's lacking about that?
So, according to the Urban Dictionary, Freakgirl is just wrong.
But the Urban Dictionary often has conflicting definitions. In fact, I could just go in and add "hte: update of 'teh'."
Are you trying to get to 100 by yourself? Please delete this comment if that's the case.
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.
But ogged. One isolated instance is not a good reason to believe that it's an update of "teh". You are being crazy.
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.
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.
I'm trying to catch this wave
Trying isn't cool, ogged.
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.
It looks more like a misspelling of "hate."
"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.
Take it from the teenager, Ogged: she's wrong. Not that you're not teh unhip.
w-lfs-n 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.
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?
Also, buy a proper button-down shirt, ogged. Nobody can stop time.
30: maybe, but not in the way you're going for, I think.
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.
Ohmigod.
"Be cool, man."
That takes me back - why do I hear "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds?"
36- But it seems like Ogged is the Times, in this context. Which means the rest of us should wear tee shirts saying "hte".
38-I've already got mine on, don't you?
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.
Possibly, but if you appear slavish about it, no. You have to have some inner poise to be truly cool.
Sure, but I can tell you guys about my plan, can't I?
We're like your band geek friends that you're going to ditch when the cool kids invite you to join them?
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 w-lfs-n, et. al's comments reflect is our ability to cocoon as we age. No doubt w-lfs-n 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.
ac, exactly. But I might then become your in to the cool kids.
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.
Ogged is the Times
"All hte news that's hip to print."
Ogged is hip—like a popotamus.
Hip like displasia.
The avant-garde hippopotamus is at my link. No joke.
Or maybe this one. I'm sobering up, so my accuracy is declining.
You cannot fool me, John Emerson. I need only hold my computer over a burning candle, and your "secret" links will be revealed.
Hey, look at that. Thanks, ogged.
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.
I like "teh" because it is pronouncable and it sounds funny. Plus I am old. "Teh" is teh beez neez.