Why are nerds so cruel?

[Egbert]

That means there is a growth market for bloody ghetto music. Get into this growing industry before it is too late.

Rap King Harrison

[Docfeelgood]

Doc seems to think that people who know wtf they are talking about are nerds...

No, actually I think they are stupid people full of bull****, not nerds. They like to pretend they know what they are talking about to impress other people. Egomania?

[Docfeelgood]

Albert I thought that was very nice.

[Provost Harrison]

That means there is a growth market for bloody ghetto music. Get into this growing industry before it is too late.

Rap King Harrison

Yo yo yo!

[Al B. Sure!]

Yo yo yo!

I don't understand this comment. Yo? What does the word yo written thrice have to do with anything? Are you saying that has anything to do with rap or being ghetto?

Just so you know, the word Yo is not 'ghetto' or 'hip hop' or 'Black' or whatever the **** else you think. It's Philadelphian. Italian-American in Philly to be exact. It just spread around, popularized by Rocky.

[Docfeelgood]

A yo yo is a toy consisting of a length of string tied at one end to a flat spool. It is played by holding the free end of the string (usually by inserting one finger in a slip knot) and pulling at it so as to cause the spool to turn whilst suspended in mid-air, either taking up or releasing the string. In the simplest play, the string is initially wound on the spool by hand; the yo-yo is then thrown downwards so that it first descends unwinding the string, then (by inertia) climbs back winding it up; and finally the yo-yo is grabbed, ready to be thrown again.

[Al B. Sure!]

Here's some theories:

Over at Easily Distracted, Timothy Burke notes that “Yo joe!” in the cartoon GI Joe “is not an inspiring battle cry.” Perhaps; far be it for me to say anything positive about that show. But I have been thinking about the term “yo” lately, and the funny way it signifies in our present cultural moment. On The Wire, to pick an a propos example, referring to young, urban, African-American males as “yo’s” is fairly common, and if you scan the various entries at urban dictionary, you’ll note that two major positions predominate: “yo” is a word that defines black inner-city culture, or it’s a word that defines the ways that white people think black culture is defined. Somewhere in between lies The Wire, so there you go. An alternate etymology is also suggested both at urban dictionary and at etymology online:
as a greeting, 1859, but the word is attested as a sailor’s or huntsman’s utterance since c.1420. Modern popularity dates from World War II (when, it is said, it was a common response at roll calls) and seems to have been most intense in Philadelphia.
This Philadelphia connection, after a very cursory google search , brought me to the following letter to the editor, from someone who seemed also to have contributed to the urban dictionary entry:
the term originated in Philadelphia, or more accurately, South Philadelphia. In the 1930′s a large proportion of the residents of South Philadelphia were Italian immigrants, mostly from the Campania region of southern Italy, the principal city of which is Naples. In the Neapolitan dialect “guaglione” (pronounced guahl-YO-nay) signified a young man. The chiefly unlettered immigrants shortened that to guahl-YO, which they pronounced whal-YO. That was inevitably further shortened to yo. The common greeting among young Italian-American males was “Hey, whal-YO!”, and then simply, “Yo!” And so it remains today.
This is plausible, I suppose. But the thing about “common response at roll calls” suggests another possible derivation, one that I’ve noted in every single cowboy-cavalry movie I’ve been watching lately. They say it a very particular way (sort of like “Company, yo-ohhhhhhh”), but it’s extremely consistent, and one of the things that’s interesting about the John Ford cavalry movies is what a stickler he was about all the little details; you don’t always know what they mean, but you do get the sense of a complex system of signification behind the various maneuvers and signals that he puts his men through. Which suggests to me that he did his research. Which suggests to me that maybe these cavalry soldiers trooping through the American West after the civil war really did say “yo” a lot.

In any case, what they really said is not really important; more relevant is the fact that in a variety of cowboy westerns (including this one, about a black soldier in an all-black indian-fighting unit, or a “Buffalo Soldier”) you hear the term “yo” a whole lot. And in the song “Buffalo Soldiers,” Bob Marley sings a chorus which goes something like this:

yo, yo, yo. yo, yo, yo. yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo.

Its modern popularization in the past few decades does seem to have come from Rocky though.




Philly Italian and probably goes back further to the Old West... not Black. But you all want to continue to wallow in your ignorance and stupid preconceptions of what Black culture is.

[Provost Harrison]

I don't understand this comment. Yo? What does the word yo written thrice have to do with anything? Are you saying that has anything to do with rap or being ghetto?

Just so you know, the word Yo is not 'ghetto' or 'hip hop' or 'Black' or whatever the **** else you think. It's Philadelphian. Italian-American in Philly to be exact. It just spread around, popularized by Rocky.

Tell me Albie, do I look like the kind of man who gives a sh*t?

[Al B. Sure!]

Tell me Albie, do I look like the kind of man who gives a sh*t?

You look like a fat asian, actually.

[Provost Harrison]

Except I'm not asian, nor fat.

Better luck next time

[Al B. Sure!]

You are definitely Asian, Provost. No way does a pure-blood Englishman have chinky eyes like you... hell, you even rock the gelled spiky hair like an Asian youth!

[MikeH]

I think that may be nye's greatest ever post.

[MikeH]

You are definitely Asian, Provost. No way does a pure-blood Englishman have chinky eyes like you... hell, you even rock the gelled spiky hair like an Asian youth!

Let's try and go easy on the racist slurs aimed at other posters.

[MOBIUS]

You are definitely Asian, Provost. No way does a pure-blood Englishman have chinky eyes like you... hell, you even rock the gelled spiky hair like an Asian youth!

Speer reverting to type, I see...

[Provost Harrison]

You are definitely Asian, Provost. No way does a pure-blood Englishman have chinky eyes like you... hell, you even rock the gelled spiky hair like an Asian youth!

Exactly how old was this picture of me you were looking at?

"Chinky eyes", "Gelled spiky hair like an Asian youth"...wow, and you scream racism