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The influence of 100-year-old viral memes can still be felt today. We use the terms "foo" and "bar" in programming as standardized nonce words or even variable

The influence of 100-year-old viral memes can still be felt today. We use the terms "foo" and "bar" in programming as standardized nonce words or even variable names; "foo" in particular is traceable at least as far back as the 1930s comic Smokey Stover, whose author Bill Holman was fond of putting nonsensical words, puns, and sight gags in his comics. The main character was a goofy fireman who drove a tiny two-wheeled fire truck actually called the Foomobile. This comic kicked off a sort of foo-mania in popular culture, as exemplified by certain Warner Bros. cartoons, in which for instance Daffy Duck would hold up a sign reading "Silence Is Foo!" "Foo" was related to "phooey" and "faux pas" and carried similar connotations of silliness or stupidity; it would combine with WWII slang "FUBAR" to form "foobar". I gave up attempting to grok the appeal of "foo" when I realized it was probably just a 1930s dank meme, and "you had to be there" to fully appreciate it. But recently we're seeing this whole process play out again so we can witness, as it happens, the rise of a new nonsense word into popular culture: "skibidi".

thaumasiotes 2y ago
> The influence of 100-year-old viral memes can still be felt today. We use the terms "foo" and "bar" I think the term "OK" is a better example.
- ffsm8 2y ago
  Not even a little? That's just the initials given in quality control, which more and more people began using as synonymous for having good quality. Which is pretty easy to understand: you keep seeing it on the well working cars. So it's an OK car... Nothing about it had goofy/silly implications. It also predates pretty much everyone on this forum (and the foobar term), so it wouldn't qualify for "you have to experience it for yourself"
  - thaumasiotes 2y ago
    No, OK is an abbreviation of "oll korrect", one example of a popular fad for cute misspellings... from the early 19th century. Did you really believe that one person handled quality control for everything?
    - sanbor 2y ago
      During that time it was also the initials of “Old Kinderhook”, which was the nickname of US President Martin van Buren[1]. His slogan was “Vote for OK” and congresman might ask “Did you get OK?” (Was this approved by Van Buren?). [1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-one-man-discovered-the-obscure-origins-of-the-word-ok-180953258/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-one-man-discov...
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drewcoo 2y ago
Foo, bar, baz, etc. are more metasyntactic variables than nonces. https://jargon-i18n.com/en/M/metasyntactic-variable.html https://jargon-i18n.com/en/M/metasyntactic-variable.html I don't think they're related to FUBAR . . . that would be fugazi. Nonsense pop terms are not this. They're slang. Blame (mostly) teenaged girls for that stuff, not elite (mostly male) engineers of yore.
- layer8 2y ago
  From the same Jargon file: https://jargon-i18n.com/en/F/foobar.html#foobar https://jargon-i18n.com/en/F/foobar.html#foobar “It has been plausibly suggested that “foobar” spread among early computer engineers partly because of FUBAR and partly because “foo bar” parses in electronics techspeak as an inverted foo signal; […]”
- AStonesThrow 2y ago
  With a small boost from Frank Zappa: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Q1yVLSR3I&si=Uw66ouRhkJIuyTlW https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Q1yVLSR3I&si=Uw66ouRhkJI...
AStonesThrow 2y ago
Recently President Biden broadcast a campaign ad where he begins with "Let's cut the malarkey", and I recognized that as a possibly Irish-adjacent neologism, so I looked it up, and apparently it was this guy: the great grand-daddy of all turn-of-the-century memes and coinages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tad_Dorgan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tad_Dorgan

thaumasiotes 2y ago

> The influence of 100-year-old viral memes can still be felt today. We use the terms "foo" and "bar" I think the term "OK" is a better example.

ffsm8 2y ago
Not even a little? That's just the initials given in quality control, which more and more people began using as synonymous for having good quality. Which is pretty easy to understand: you keep seeing it on the well working cars. So it's an OK car... Nothing about it had goofy/silly implications. It also predates pretty much everyone on this forum (and the foobar term), so it wouldn't qualify for "you have to experience it for yourself"
- thaumasiotes 2y ago
  No, OK is an abbreviation of "oll korrect", one example of a popular fad for cute misspellings... from the early 19th century. Did you really believe that one person handled quality control for everything?
  - sanbor 2y ago
    During that time it was also the initials of “Old Kinderhook”, which was the nickname of US President Martin van Buren[1]. His slogan was “Vote for OK” and congresman might ask “Did you get OK?” (Was this approved by Van Buren?). [1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-one-man-discovered-the-obscure-origins-of-the-word-ok-180953258/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-one-man-discov...

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drewcoo 2y ago

Foo, bar, baz, etc. are more metasyntactic variables than nonces. https://jargon-i18n.com/en/M/metasyntactic-variable.html https://jargon-i18n.com/en/M/metasyntactic-variable.html I don't think they're related to FUBAR . . . that would be fugazi. Nonsense pop terms are not this. They're slang. Blame (mostly) teenaged girls for that stuff, not elite (mostly male) engineers of yore.

layer8 2y ago
From the same Jargon file: https://jargon-i18n.com/en/F/foobar.html#foobar https://jargon-i18n.com/en/F/foobar.html#foobar “It has been plausibly suggested that “foobar” spread among early computer engineers partly because of FUBAR and partly because “foo bar” parses in electronics techspeak as an inverted foo signal; […]”
AStonesThrow 2y ago
With a small boost from Frank Zappa: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Q1yVLSR3I&si=Uw66ouRhkJIuyTlW https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=R5Q1yVLSR3I&si=Uw66ouRhkJI...

AStonesThrow 2y ago

Recently President Biden broadcast a campaign ad where he begins with "Let's cut the malarkey", and I recognized that as a possibly Irish-adjacent neologism, so I looked it up, and apparently it was this guy: the great grand-daddy of all turn-of-the-century memes and coinages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tad_Dorgan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tad_Dorgan