Issues with "derp"

[sqbr]

Can someone give me a link to a post about why "derp" is abelist? There's a discussion on my twitter list, and there's no way I can summarise it in 140 characters.

(nb I am also pretty sleepy, so don't feel up to explaining it here either. If you're interested, I'm sure someone else will post a link eventually)

Comments

[kaz]

I was confused about this myself - people were saying that it arose from mocking sounds made by people with certain intellectual disabilities, but I couldn't remember anything that hinted at that context - but... Let's just say that if you run a Google image search on "derp" or "herp derp", the evidence in form of images photoshopped to look like people with Down Syndrome as well as stuff that I'm not sure how to describe but let's just say it's pretty clear what is being referred to, hits you like an anvil of ableism.

[ariaflame]

No, because apart from seeing some 'herp a derp' things around, I am unfamiliar with the word and do not know what it actually means.

[willow]

I'll be tracking to see if you get that link, cause for the longest time I've been wondering if I was the only one who knew/remembered/or realized that it's a mocking sound made towards the mentally disabled about their speech patterns/ability or inability to speak, and I've been twitchy about it for ages. But couldn't find anything about its origins (it or the hd version)

[sqbr]

Yes but the person I was discussing it with found that insufficiently compelling, arguing that it was plausibly people co-opting a non-abelist word for abelist purposes.

[sqbr]

No luck so far :/

[fred_mouse]

I first encountered the word in a rant about ableist uses, but I have no memory of where, and didn't have any real understanding of what the rant was talking about at the time - I still rarely see the word, so I don't have a built in reaction to it. Mostly, I wonder if we are seeing a regional word use explode because of the lack of borders issue.

[djkittycat]

The origins are from a movie made by the creators of South Park. Look on Know Your Meme. The original documented occurrence had nothing to do with people with intellectual disabilities. It has arguably evolved, however, at least in some folks' usage.

[shehasathree]

I've read a rebuttal to the idea that it was started by South Park, but I can't find it. Unfortunately fwd didn't do an Ableist Word Profile for this one (I looked!).

[sqbr]

I think it's less regional and more subcultural. I've seen it a lot in 4chan-meme influenced humour.

[sqbr]

Yes, I'm sure I saw that too but can't remember where! Oh well.

[sami]

That seems like it starts to take on one of those weird lines of language-shifts-and-meanings-change ambiguity. (Like how very, very few people think of phrases like "whirling dervish" as being racist, because very, very few people know of any meaning to "dervish" other than "thing that whirls".)

My experience with derp is mostly from a particular gaming community (EVE Online), and it doesn't even vaguely match stuff towards the inability to speak of the mentally disabled, because something has to hit at least about 800 words before being categorised as "derping", and is generally to do with people chestbeating their own alliance or rationalising losing a battle. Of course, losing a battle could happen because you derped it, or because your tactical discussions were all herp derp, so then you accidentally the whole fleet. (The missing verb there was intentional. "Accidentally the whole [thing]" is an EVE thing too.)

I don't know, though - EVE has quite a few of its own jargon quirks, some of which have escaped into the gaming wild, but some of which haven't, and it's kind of its own special snowflake of language use.

[sqbr]

These slang terms shift a lot. I saw a bunch of people arguing that "namefag" wasn't homophobic but simply the term their community used for people who posted logged in when they were supposed to be anonymous. And, ok, no explicit relationship to sexuality there, but still...