When I heard about British diver Tom Daley knitting and crocheting in the stands at the Tokyo Olympics, I did what I suspect a lot of people did as the story has gone viral. I clap laughed. That is, I enjoyed the story and thought so much I was clapping while I was laughing, like applauding him for it while getting enough of a kick from it I was laughing. Except there was one little problem. “Clap laugh” isn’t a proper term, apparently! A DuckDuckGo search for “clap laugh” with quotations to show results of those exact words and spacing, as well as that for “claplaugh” as one word, showed nothing! A Google search showed a few GIFs under the term, some as “laugh clap”. But you know what, for the unofficiality that this is, I’ll stake claim to it!
urban
The Downtown Monk
I live downtown like lots of people. However, I hardly exhibit the traits of a typical downtowner who wants to live close to work, near lots of amenities, including fine dining and entertainment, and is living the good life through spending of money relatively freely. I don’t even exhibit traits of a student with some budget who’s living reasonably close to school, but is out and about a lot, and has home amenities like the others of cable or subscription TV, lots of tech, that many of their fellow students don’t. Compared to them, for lack of spending, lack of socialization, lots of learning and spirituality (often involving life philosophies), I led the lifestyle of a monk, though I am far from a real monk. I’m just far enough from them in lifestyle that I would be like a monk in comparison.
Do Humans Suffer from Zoochosis?
Zoochosis is a word used to explain the stereotypical behavior of animals in captivity, which tends to be ones that show a creature going crazy since it is not in its natural environment, as I discussed in this post. But here’s an interesting question. As a nomadic species for tens of thousands of years, and a rural one at that as little as a few decades ago that is but a blink in our evolutionary history, are we suited to the urban lifestyle that is not unlike a zoo for us? And can we answer that by seeing if we suffer similar symptoms to zoochosis we diagnose in animals, when we live in dense urban areas lacking much nature?
This Hidden Brain podcast provides some pretty interesting, if not conclusive, answers, even though the research wasn’t quite framed like that. I’m actually surprised they didn’t make the connection. It would have made the story and research a lot more relatable as we all know the concept of zoos and what it must be like to be an animal trapped in there for people to see, pet, and such, in a place very different than the ones they belong in, despite our best efforts to make the zoo areas similar to their natural environment.
My One Minute Film in the Toronto Urban Film Festival
I am honoured this year to have my one minute film in the Toronto Urban Film Festival this year (TUFF).
Vượt Biên: Voyage of a Diaspora is a metaphorical depiction of the Vietnamese Boat People’s journey for freedom, using photos from the United Nations’ Photo Library and a few from my past.
[December 2011 edit: I’m allowed to share it now that the festival is over]
Can’t We Find a Better Term Than Facebook Whales?
The people at Facebook call Facebook users with over 1,000 friends Facebook “whales”.
For a hip company in a hip business like social media, that’s about as “un-urban” a term as I thought they could come up with for the urban dictionary of new slang.
“Sub-urban” would be the more appropriate term, as that’s like Latin for “below” or “less than” urban. But Latin’s too old and logical to be hip.
So can’t we come up with a better term?
Flake?
Fake?
Fimp or Frimp? (Friend and Pimp)
Falker? (Friend and Stalker)
Follector or Frollector? (Friend and Collector)
Fliend? (Flake and Friend)
Actually, I’d save fliend for people you add but you don’t really want to. You just add them to avoid awkwardness. An example might be a boss you don’t like but who may have a thing or suspicion for you. Or a partner of someone you know who wants to keep an eye on activity between his/her partner and anyone else who might be a “threat”… or who is just jealous of everyone else in their partner’s life. You get the idea.
Fliend. Yeah. I kind of like it! Someone you don’t particularly like sends you a Friend Request. You have to reluctantly accept it so you say Sure, I’ll be your FLIEND! 🙂
But I digress. Back to the original topic.
Maybe none of those are great, you know, and probably a little too judgmental for Facebook to put out there, but for the people outside of Facebook, can’t we come up with any better idea than Facebook whale?
Maybe there’s a term out there already? After all, the Urban Dictionary has terms like Facebookemon for all sorts of Facebook related activities, habits and people.
Can someone inform me or suggest a term?
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Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 6.4
Digital Citizen 