Alt.tasteless
Encyclopedia
alt.tasteless is a Usenet
newsgroup
dedicated to the discussion of tasteless
and offensive subjects. It was founded in 1989.
alt.tasteless is frequented by a diverse readership, most of whom share stories and insights which would not be welcome in other forums or in polite conversation. It is in fact considered bad form to post anything in alt.tasteless which is not offensive in most other situations. To that end, if one ever posts anything patently non-tasteless, it is customary to append on some tasteless anecdote or insight into any topic at all to render a post worthy of alt.tasteless.
alt.tasteless is an example of the sort of subject matter that the Alt hierarchy is intended for.
has the thread archived. The high amount of traffic that this generated caused many server restarts and as a reference to this, some versions of the INN man pages included references to cats like using meow as the reason for restarting or an example newsgroup called news.admin.meow.
A more comprehensive list can be found in the phrasebook section of the alt.tasteless FAQ
, http://www.faqs.org/faqs/tasteless/phrase-book/.
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...
newsgroup
Newsgroup
A usenet newsgroup is a repository usually within the Usenet system, for messages posted from many users in different locations. The term may be confusing to some, because it is usually a discussion group. Newsgroups are technically distinct from, but functionally similar to, discussion forums on...
dedicated to the discussion of tasteless
Disgust
Disgust is a type of aversion that involves withdrawing from a person or object with strong expressions of revulsion whether real or pretended. It is one of the basic emotions and is typically associated with things that are regarded as unclean, inedible, infectious, gory or otherwise offensive...
and offensive subjects. It was founded in 1989.
alt.tasteless is frequented by a diverse readership, most of whom share stories and insights which would not be welcome in other forums or in polite conversation. It is in fact considered bad form to post anything in alt.tasteless which is not offensive in most other situations. To that end, if one ever posts anything patently non-tasteless, it is customary to append on some tasteless anecdote or insight into any topic at all to render a post worthy of alt.tasteless.
alt.tasteless is an example of the sort of subject matter that the Alt hierarchy is intended for.
Notable events
alt.tasteless was involved in a number of well-known newsgroup invasions (in which the members of one newsgroup engage in organized trolling of another newsgroup). The best-known incident was an invasion of rec.pets.cats in 1993, in which alt.tasteless members posted a bogus request for advice (how does one deal with noisome feline diarrhea?) and several outrageous replies (firing "copper-jacketed hollow-points" into the cat's anus, among others). Wired Magazine covered the invasion in 1994. Google GroupsGoogle Groups
Google Groups is a service from Google Inc. that supports discussion groups, including many Usenet newsgroups, based on common interests. The service was started in 1995 as Deja News, and was transitioned to Google Groups after a February 2001 buyout....
has the thread archived. The high amount of traffic that this generated caused many server restarts and as a reference to this, some versions of the INN man pages included references to cats like using meow as the reason for restarting or an example newsgroup called news.admin.meow.
A brief glossary of alt.tasteless vocabulary
- AT - alt.tasteless
- Apeshit - Spree killingsSpree killerA spree killer is someone who embarks on a murderous assault on two or more victims in a short time in multiple locations. The U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics defines a spree killing as "killings at two or more locations with almost no time break between murders."-Definition:According to the...
, when someone flies off the handle and kills multiple people (usually it must be more than 2 or 3, although wounding enough people with intent to kill may lower the required number of deaths) in a short span of time (minutes or hours). As in "he went apeshit and blew away half the employees in the post office." As a noun used to refer to any such acts in general, one might also see "Apeshittery."
- CelebriDeath - Celebrity Death. The death of a famous or noteworthy person, often someone who was listed on the Alt.Tasteless Dead PoolDead poolA dead pool, also known as a death pool, death watch, dead cert or ghoul pool, is a game of prediction which involves guessing when someone will die. Sometimes it is a bet where money is involved...
.
- Choad - A Penis that is well below average in length, yet quite substantial in the girth department.
- Crotch Fruit, or Sprog - ChildChildBiologically, a child is generally a human between the stages of birth and puberty. Some vernacular definitions of a child include the fetus, as being an unborn child. The legal definition of "child" generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger than the age of majority...
ren. The plural form of "sprog" is usually "sproggen."
- Darwin - Any case where people remove themselves from the gene pool by means which indicate they were too stupid to justify being in it in the first place. "Auto-Darwin" implies that the death (or sterilization) was unassisted. See also: Darwin AwardsDarwin AwardsThe Darwin Awards are a tongue-in-cheek honor, created by Wendy Northcutt to recognize individuals who contribute to human evolution by self-selecting themselves out of the gene pool through putting themselves in life-threatening situations...
- FapFAPFAP may refer to:Technology and industry* FORTRAN Assembly Program, the macro assembler for some IBM mainframe computers* Fair Access Policy, a term for a bandwidth cap, limiting Internet usage...
- Onomatopoeia for masturbationMasturbationMasturbation refers to sexual stimulation of a person's own genitals, usually to the point of orgasm. The stimulation can be performed manually, by use of objects or tools, or by some combination of these methods. Masturbation is a common form of autoeroticism...
. Most often used in the context of masturbating over someone else's misfortune. Potential SRs can also be described as "fap-worthy".
- Fishwrap - A newspaperNewspaperA newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
.
- Glub - Frequently used in place of "God," "Glub" is sometimes simply a direct replacement for the Abrahamic GodGodGod is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
, but is also sometimes spoken of as either a separate cruel, misanthropic deityDeityA deity is a recognized preternatural or supernatural immortal being, who may be thought of as holy, divine, or sacred, held in high regard, and respected by believers....
, as a cruel, misanthropic aspectHinduismHinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...
of God, or simply to imply that the Abrahamic God is cruel and misanthropic.
- GOMER - Get Out of My Emergency Room. An acronym used by the medical workers who frequent AT to refer to people (usually old) who are on the verge of an inevitable death and who cling to life by making entirely too much fruitless use of the services of the medical professions. The word was originally used in Samuel ShemSamuel ShemSamuel Shem is the pen-name of the American psychiatrist Stephen Joseph Bergman . His main works are The House of God and Mount Misery, both fictional but close-to-real first-hand descriptions of the training of doctors in the United States.Bergman was a Rhodes Scholar at Balliol College, Oxford in...
's novel The House of GodThe House of GodThe House of God is a satirical novel by Samuel Shem , published in 1978. It portrays the psychological harm done to medical interns during the course of medical internship in the early 1970s.-Storyline:...
.
- Grogan - FecesFecesFeces, faeces, or fæces is a waste product from an animal's digestive tract expelled through the anus or cloaca during defecation.-Etymology:...
.
- ObT or ObTasteless - "Obligatory Tastelessness." This is placed at the beginning of an appendix to a post, usually a reply to another post, in which the main text was not tasteless enough to be worthy of alt.tasteless, and so something fouler was required. "Ob" may also be put in front of other words when one wishes to go on to a tangent about something which seemed like it had to be mentioned, or when one wishes to be a little more specific about what sort of tastelessness they are appending onto the main text of a post.
- Pinch a loaf - To use the anal sphincter to break an overly long "Grogan" in two as it emerges, thus causing the lower half to fall off into the bowl.
- Schlick - Female equivalent of "Fap".
- SR and SD - "SpoogeSemenSemen is an organic fluid, also known as seminal fluid, that may contain spermatozoa. It is secreted by the gonads and other sexual organs of male or hermaphroditic animals and can fertilize female ova...
Receptacle" and "Spooge Donor." Used to define someone's role in a sexual relationship.
- Uncle Chuck - Charles DarwinCharles DarwinCharles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
. Normally used as an anthropomorphic personification of Darwin AwardsDarwin AwardsThe Darwin Awards are a tongue-in-cheek honor, created by Wendy Northcutt to recognize individuals who contribute to human evolution by self-selecting themselves out of the gene pool through putting themselves in life-threatening situations...
.
A more comprehensive list can be found in the phrasebook section of the alt.tasteless FAQ
FAQ
Frequently asked questions are listed questions and answers, all supposed to be commonly asked in some context, and pertaining to a particular topic. "FAQ" is usually pronounced as an initialism rather than an acronym, but an acronym form does exist. Since the acronym FAQ originated in textual...
, http://www.faqs.org/faqs/tasteless/phrase-book/.
Recurring topics in alt.tasteless
- Serial killerSerial killerA serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
s - AKA Homicidal Heroes or simply "Our Hero" - Mass murderMass murderMass murder is the act of murdering a large number of people , typically at the same time or over a relatively short period of time. According to the FBI, mass murder is defined as four or more murders occurring during a particular event with no cooling-off period between the murders...
- DictatorDictatorA dictator is a ruler who assumes sole and absolute power but without hereditary ascension such as an absolute monarch. When other states call the head of state of a particular state a dictator, that state is called a dictatorship...
s - ScatologyScatologyIn medicine and biology, scatology or coprology is the study of feces.Scatological studies allow one to determine a wide range of biological information about a creature, including its diet , healthiness, and diseases such as tapeworms. The word derives from the Greek σκώρ In medicine and biology,...
and coprophiliaCoprophiliaCoprophilia , also called scatophilia or scat, is the paraphilia involving sexual pleasure from feces...
- to include so called "Me go plop plop!" posts. - DiseaseDiseaseA disease is an abnormal condition affecting the body of an organism. It is often construed to be a medical condition associated with specific symptoms and signs. It may be caused by external factors, such as infectious disease, or it may be caused by internal dysfunctions, such as autoimmune...
- accidents, deformity, epidemics, and other unpleasant medical topics - Animal cruelty
- SexSexIn biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into a male or female variety . Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents...
- especially unusual sexual fetishes and sodomySodomySodomy is an anal or other copulation-like act, especially between male persons or between a man and animal, and one who practices sodomy is a "sodomite"...
. - DeathDeathDeath is the permanent termination of the biological functions that sustain a living organism. Phenomena which commonly bring about death include old age, predation, malnutrition, disease, and accidents or trauma resulting in terminal injury....
- especially of celebrity deaths, or other news-making gruesome deaths. - PedophiliaPedophiliaAs a medical diagnosis, pedophilia is defined as a psychiatric disorder in adults or late adolescents typically characterized by a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children...
- Mental retardationMental retardationMental retardation is a generalized disorder appearing before adulthood, characterized by significantly impaired cognitive functioning and deficits in two or more adaptive behaviors...
- Rednecks
- Race - Some Alt.tasteless posters are overtly racist, which does help to create an air of tastelessness in their discourse. Regardless, real problems prevalent within particular ethnic groups may actually have meaningful discussion prompted by off-the-cuff offensive remarks.
- TerrorismTerrorismTerrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...
- Though this is a common topic elsewhere, the alt.tasteless approach to it often tends towards brainstorming ideas for how to commit it, reveling in the chaos and paranoia it generates and post-event analysis on style, effectiveness and the resultant body countBody countA body count is the total number of people killed in a particular event. In combat, a body count is often based on the number of confirmed kills, but occasionally only an estimate.-Military use:...
s. - RapeRapeRape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
- CannibalismCannibalismCannibalism is the act or practice of humans eating the flesh of other human beings. It is also called anthropophagy...