JANKS ARCHIVE

research & resources for janksarchive.org

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You’re such a tight wad, if I shoved a lump of coal up your ass, in a week I’d have a pearl. -overheard in Dothan, Alabama

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Overhead in Brooklyn today: Why are you talking to me? Do you want to smell your own breath?

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A Dutch Jank

 je hebt te veel hooi op je vork (you have too much hay on your fork)

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"Again, in order to feel kindly towards a person to whom we have been inimical, the only way is more or less deliberately to smile, to make sympathetic inquiries, and to force ourselves to say genial things. One hearty laugh together will bring enemies into a closer communion of heart than hours spent on both sides in inward wrestling with the mental demon of uncharitable feeling."

-William James "The Gospel of Relaxation" (The Heart of William James p. 132)

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"If being a Detroit fan was easy it would be called your mom"

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Overheard on the playground in Shaker Heights, OH: "I body shamed your mom last night."

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This chapter examines and explicates razzing—a teasing ritual utilized by American Indians that functions as a means of testing and establishing cultural

This chapter examines and explicates razzing—a teasing ritual utilized by American Indians that functions as a means of testing and establishing cultural identity. It discusses the problematic nature of identifying as an Indian and explains the concept of Indian-ness. The approach used to conceptualize and analyze razzing is based on the ethnography of speaking as articulated by Hymes. The categories of topic, purpose, act sequence, setting, and participants are particularly useful for describing the organization of the razzing ritual. The chapter delineates the structure and functions of razzing; and provides an exemplar of razzing in which cultural competence is displayed from and insider's perspective. Not only is razzing constructed as talk in face-to-face interactions, it may also be constructed in the form of songs directed towards other individuals or events. Razzing in this form is best exemplified by "forty- nines.".

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The Wide World of Disease-Based Dutch Profanity

"Get the corona!" is starting to make an appearance.

“Cultures tend to form their profanity around concepts that they fear.“

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In Russian, an old person is called a 'staryy grib' - a dried-up mushroom

Fungipedia: A Brief Compendium of Mushroom Lore by Lawrence Millman

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A Kobe Bryant Joke Goes Wrong, Revealing Comedy’s Troll Side

Comedians have always been tempted to make fun of tragedies, but a new controversy exposes how dark humor has evolved and expanded.

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A second theory agrees that our unique language evolved as a means of sharing information about the world. But the most important information that needed to be conveyed was about humans, not about lions and bison. Our language evolved as a way of gossiping. According to this theory Homo sapiens is primarily a social animal. Social cooperation is our key for survival and reproduction. It is not enough for individual men and women to know the whereabouts of lions and bison. It’s much more important for them to know who in their band hates whom, who is sleeping with whom, who is honest, and who is a cheat. The amount of information that one must obtain and store in order to track the ever-changing relationships of a few dozen individuals is staggering. (In a band of fifty individuals, there are 1,225 one-on-one relationships, and countless more complex social combinations.) All apes show a keen interest in such social information, but they have trouble gossiping effectively. Neanderthals and archaic Homo sapiens probably also had a hard time talking behind each other’s backs – a much maligned ability which is in fact essential for cooperation in large numbers. The new linguistic skills that modern Sapiens acquired about seventy millennia ago enabled them to gossip for hours on end. Reliable information about who could be trusted meant that small bands could expand into larger bands, and Sapiens could develop tighter and more sophisticated types of cooperation. The gossip theory might sound like a joke, but numerous studies support it. Even today the vast majority of human communication – whether in the form of emails, phone calls or newspaper columns – is gossip. It comes so naturally to us that it seems as if our language evolved for this very purpose. Do you think that history professors chat about the reasons for World War One when they meet for lunch, or that nuclear physicists spend their coffee breaks at scientific conferences talking about quarks? Sometimes. But more often, they gossip about the professor who caught her husband cheating, or the quarrel between the head of the department and the dean, or the rumours that a colleague used his research funds to buy a Lexus. Gossip usually focuses on wrongdoings. Rumour-mongers are the original fourth estate, journalists who inform society about and thus protect it from cheats and freeloaders.

Sapiens (pp. 22-24), Yuval Noah Harari

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Elon Musk Says “Pedo Guy” Was a Common Insult in His Youth. We Checked With 17 of His Schoolmates.

Thirteen of them have no idea what he's talking about.

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The rise of the swear nerds

Invented curses like “fuckbonnet,” “douchenozzle,” and “shitwhistle” suggest something obnoxious about the new politics of civility.

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“These features of wake-amusements were known by various names, according to the different districts in which they were practised. Sconcing, Scogging and Jib(b)ing were three such titles. The purpose of the ridicule was to make the recipient uncomfortable and to amuse the hearers. Although it was meant as fun, on the surface, still malice and insult were also present on occasions. Resentment at some jibe only made matters worse; the best policy for the recipient of the mockery was to take it in good part and hope it would shortly be over.” Taunting and Mocking at Irish Wakes and Funerals from Seán O Súilleabháin’s “Irish Wake Amusements” (1961).

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The Muireann O'Connell show asked listeners from every County to send in their favourite local insult.

Irish insults by County 

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When Rape Jokes Are Performance Art, Is It OK to Laugh?

‘I’m never offended,’ says Vanessa Place, the author of ‘You Had to Be There,’ a book of jokes about sexual assault.

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Some insulting phrases in Esperanto