An amusing coinage to come out of the RPG community (at least, that’s where I think it was coined) is “badwrongfun” (always written as one word). This represents the idea that the fun you are having is ideologically unsound – it is exactly the same idea as political correctness, i.e. fun that is politically incorrect is badwrongfun.
In specific, “badwrongfun” is often used to deride attempts to analyse and define the RPG field. Such attempts invariably leave some people feeling like they are being disparaged, and they proudly own their badwrongfun to mock the theorists. (I will spare you further details – RPG theory is not something I would lightly inflict upon good people such as you, readers.) It is also now used tongue-in-cheek to reference games and non-game entertainments that are can be seen as improper – unwholesome movies, for example, are always “badwrongfun” (assuming they are fun at all).
Even though this term is often used in high seriousness, which I find exasperating in the extreme, it still pleases me as a coinage. Its the overload of negativity that does it, the scold’s indulgent delight in taking the moral high ground which only undermines itself. It’s a great little phrase.
I wonder, what pleases you among the coinages and phrases that have cropped up in your fields of interest?
7 thoughts on “BadWrongFun”
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In an attempt to replace the decidedly geeky and unintuitive word “machinima” (and also in an attempt to demonstrate the attitude of “use whatever tools you have available to tell your story”), there’s a movement within the Machinima community who refer to their work as “anymation”.
My sister works for a chain of luxury home furnishing stores, and won regional sales person of the year- the whole west coast of stores. She described getting to go to the corporate meeting (as a prize) as “drinking the kool-aide.” I hadn’t heard that one before, but that’s what she said all the employees say if you love working for corporate America.
I’ve often heard “s/he drank the kool-aid” as a term to describe anyone who has bought into a questionable idea or group, especially if they are evangelical about it.
I don’t know if this counts, but a mailing list I’ve been on for the last 10 years or so talks about “Mildred’s law of inverse trailers”, which states that a movie is usually as good as its trailer is bad and vice versa.
Johnnie: perhaps I’m missing something, but why are people who make movies out of video game footage worried that the word that describes them is “decidedly geeky”?
Alligator – “drinking the kool-aid” is a reference to the mass murder/suicide in Jonestown by members of the People’s Temple cult in 1978.
The members (either voluntarily or through force) drunk a grape-flavoured drink laced with poison at the paranoid behest of the cult’s paranoid charismatic leader, Jim Jones.
For more on the event, wiki it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown#Deaths_in_Jonestown
“Drinking the Kool-Aid” is said ironically to signify what actions or sacrifices may need to be made to join or belong to a questionable group or organisation.
(And, as a note, the poisoned drink in Jonestown was actually Flavor-Aid, not Kool-Aid. But there you go =)
@Scott A – That’s something I never knew, and it’s damned disturbing. I’ll think twice before I use that expression in future.
@Joey – You are indeed missing the point, but the fact that you’re missing the point is the point, if you see what I mean. Although the people who create machinima are still very geeky (although not exclusively so any more) there’s a movement to try to change the audience for machinima into both the geeky and the geek-averse. Machinima is no longer just gameplay videos and frag movies. There’s some superb artistic pieces being made, which stand on their own merits for any audience. Take a look at some of the stuff on http://www.machiniplex.com. The people who create works like these are currently looking for ways to distance themselves from the geeky conception that machinima has inevitably acquired.
It’s also worth pointing out that not all machinima is made using a game engine any more. Dedicated tools such as (gratuitous plug warning) Moviestorm mean that machinimators can create their work in an engine to which they have complete rights. Technically, you’re breaking the EULA of most games by creating machinima from them. By using tools like Moviestorm (or Second Life or Antics3d or IClone, or a handful of others) creators can publish their work and even make money from it.
The Jonestown doco at the NZFF a couple of years ago had archival footage of Jim Jones showing a news crew around the compound. He got to the kitchen and ran through their supplies, holding up the powdered drink clearly labelled “Flavor-Aid” and describing it as “Kool-Aid”.
As someone elsewhere has stated, it’s every Jonestown pedant’s worst nightmare. /Oh yeaaaaaaaaah/