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Comment by kleiba | Hacker News Reader

I personally find the use of single word "This." in reply to a comment on forums (such as e.g. HN) really annoying. (But then again, I've reached an age where you tend to find everything new awful.) I guess the reason why it pisses me off is that it doesn't do anything that "Yes.", "Exactly.", "I agree" couldn't already do, but at the same time it has this overly sweet smell of kool-aid that just makes you sick.

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For me (I’m 46 so I think I’ve reached “get off my lawn” age), it’s short for “this [is the correct answer.]” So I’ve never had a problem with it and probably used it once or twice myself.

A couple summers ago at the pool I heard a teenage girl exclaim “poned!” after besting her friend at something they were playing. It took me a moment to realize she’d just said “pwned” since I’d never heard it said out loud before and in my mind I’ve always read it “owned.” Now that was a “get off my lawn moment!”

> A couple summers ago at the pool I heard a teenage girl exclaim “poned!” after besting her friend at something they were playing. It took me a moment to realize she’d just said “pwned” since I’d never heard it said out loud before and in my mind I’ve always read it “owned.” Now that was a “get off my lawn moment!”

That pronunciation was popularized by the famous South Park episode on World of Warcraft [1] [2] which first aired in 2006. So it's not actually particularly new at all.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPx__G9GkRY [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_Love,_Not_Warcraft

I'd go with the all time great Canadian Gamer show: PurePwnage, from 2004, as the popularizer of the spoken term. Though it goes back to at least 1999 with the original CounterStrike and the term in text, then read aloud. I remember the shouts of 'pone' in the afterschool computer lounge from friends to at least 1999, if not earlier.

http://www.purepwnage.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Pwnage

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pwn

I don't dispute the pronunciation as 'poned' goes back further, but I'm saying that South Park popularized it. PurePwnage uses the pronunciation 'owned', right?

"...you pronounce 'own' as 'pwn', what gives?"

It was definitely popular in fps games in 99’

It's more like "this... is the correct answer, and it so obviously resonates extensively with everyone else that I feel no need to substantiate any further, other than with an abrupt and final full stop".

To me it sometimes comes across as "you made your comment, I agree, and I'll take the liberty to suggest that it's so obvious and insightful that probably everyone must agree".

This.

To me the word you quoted is much stronger than "exactly" or "I agree." The latter two are about the sentiment but the former means something like "This is the best possible phrasing I can imagine: I completely agree and you have captured everything, perfectly." While for a deep discourse (as on HN) --

Oh.

Okay so nevermind. When I started to write this comment I was going to say that here on hacker news it fosters a deeper discourse, but as a poor reader on Reddit reading through 700 comments, do you really want to read the long sentence I just quoted, or are you helped by reading "this", to call your attention upthread.

However I realized that Reddit's 700 comments on each thread are - almost all noise. "This" is a kneejerk one word answer that completely shuts down discourse.

So after actually writing my comment I have switched my opinion. Which itself may well have been due to the style of discourse encouraged here!

To me, "This." is stronger than "Yes.", "Exactly.", etc.

In my opinion, "This." means that you not only agree with the previous comments, but you could have made it yourself. It has a connotation of "This is the full answer", "This is it, you don't even need to read further below", "This is exactly the same thing I would have said".

I might be making the connotations up, though, it's not like there is a dictionary covering this kind of things.

Exactly.

this.

times a 1,000.

[image of a text]

sorry gotta go. my raw water delivery just arrived [emoji].

I can't tell which earlier message you're thissing.

Like the GGP I sort of hate "This.", but I think I love "thissing".

Indeed, it seems very hard to dis the thissing.

For me the worst offender is

/thread

Indeed

This

Yes

/sarc

"non-trivial" is the one that annoys me the most but I can't fully explain why. Perhaps it's a bit like the reaction when I hear "visceral" while listening to book and movie reviews. It just seems a tad pretentious; or stuck-up. Urgh.

I understand it's all about precision but to me it doesn't feel like the type of plain English that normal people use. Perhaps it's too... formulaic?

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