Pet peeve dissection: "For the win"

For a while now, I've heard the phrase "for the win" spoken in casual conversation, and it increasingly became a phrase that would do nothing for me but a flash of anger. I had to ask myself why.

First, there's the context in which it's spoken. Roughly translated it means, "you just made a cultural reference that amused me." This hits upon a conversational tactic which I try not to subscribe to - that is, taking the funny words of others and repeating them. I find that this adds nothing to the conversation, but also tends to steer it away from the topic at hand and toward the reference that probably not everyone gets, leaving those out of the loop.

Second, it wants to imply that the conversation is something that can be won or lost. I don't talk to win. Not only does someone winning imply everyone else losing, a win also signifies an end. Keeping an interesting conversation going is hard enough; starting a new one is worse.

As usual, I thought I had more to say about that. Apparently I was wrong. So, if you've ever seen me explode at someone about that, that's why.

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Metacomics

I think Arbuckle is perhaps one of the most strangely beautiful things I've seen in the webcomic world lately. From the mind of the same guy that wrote 1/0, the idea is to redraw Garfield with the same scripts, but without seeing what Garfield is thinking. (The original idea was to draw it in a realistic style, but many of the artists have thrown that part out.) Not only is it a wonderful example of Fair Use, it also makes for a wonderful statement about stagnation in syndicated comics. I mean, seriously, Garfield is going on thirty years old now, to the best of my knowledge without a damn thing happening. In my regular reading I've got at least two entire universes in serious danger of destruction, countless planets have gone through the same risk (some faring better than others), and plenty of jokes that are actually funny.

(I suppose I should get an updated count of my reading. Accounting for erratic schedules, it seems to be somewhere around 150 updates per week.)

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