"Fisking"

Odradek

People realize this comes from a conservative attempting to own someone for thinking the Iraq War might be a bad idea, right?

Tachyon

slang tends to rapidly change and its origins get forgotten in the process so . . . probably not?

Haven

I thought it came from being the Kingpin of crime?

Odradek

The term refers to Robert Fisk, a journalist who wrote some rather foolish anti-war stuff, and who in particular wrote a story in which he (1) recounted how he was beaten by some anti-American Afghan refugees, and (2) thought they were morally right for doing so. Hence many pro-war blogs -- most famously, InstaPundit -- often use the term "Fisking" figuratively to mean a thorough and forceful verbal beating of an anti-war, possibly anti-American, commentator who has richly earned this figurative beating through his words. Good Fisking tends to be (or at least aim to be) quite logical, and often quotes the other article in detail, interspersing criticisms with the original article's text.

Responding to an earlier declaration against the war by a group of German intellectuals, a group of American academics and intellectuals has written a response. It's basically a heavyweight group-Fisking.

Tachyon

schooling some progs with my rational insights

Tachyon

hey . . . what if this is why Eddie thought 'lots of quotes = trolling in progress'?

Odradek

My God...

lee4hmz

lol instapundit. they're as bad as breitbart or wnd

also I've seen people on RationalWiki use "fisking" for this, but considering RW's overall political bent, I don't think they knew about its origin.

lee4hmz

also, this is a new term for something that's probably as old as Usenet, possibly as old as email itself. it's just that ESR is a dork and insists on having his own lingo for everything

Tre

Tachyon said:

slang tends to rapidly change and its origins get forgotten in the process so . . . probably not?

for some reason this reminds me of how people got up in arms around Halloween a few years back on Tumblr because of the popularity of the word "spooky"/"spook," and the idea that because it was a racial slur half a century ago it had the same connotations today (which was, frankly, a ridiculous notion-- and I say this as a member of the group it would be considered a slur against)

The internet is so weird

Sredni Vashtar

Worse yet, the racist use of "spook" is significantly more recent than the more common use of the word, which comes from a Dutch colloquialism brought into English either through sailor jargon (like luck) or through the speech of colonists. In any case, it's a very American word that is still recognised abroad, and a perfectly good one.

Odradek

It also means CIA agent

Sredni Vashtar

That use actually has slightly earlier attestation than the racist use as well.

Odradek

System Mastery once covered a game about ghost spies called Spookshow

The title was the best thing about it

Sredni Vashtar

'Tis a shame.

Odradek

However there is an entirely separate game about corporate ghost spies called Orpheus that is apparently fairly solid.

Haven

That just makes me think of GHOST/ECHO, which is basically Ghost Shadowrun except...the entire thing is two pages, and one of them is just the credits and a list of nouns.

Klinotaxis

Look at all those soliduses