Internet Gamer Slang

[miko2]

Sometimes the internet slang and catch-phrases you run across are only funny because you see them repeated often enough, and you don't necessarily know the original context. On the City of Heroes message boards, it was common (especially when certain "dead horse" topics came up) for people to change the subject to the topic of pie or cake. In other words, to refuse to talk about the actual subject being broached. One phrase that people repeated was that "the cake is a lie". I never really knew why this was funny, but I saw it so often that I felt like I was "in" on the joke, sort of.

Then two days ago /GU comics had a guest comic that potentially explained where this phrase comes from. As Woodie explained in his explanation of this comic, "Now, those of you that have played Portal are probably more likely to get the joke. ...Throughout the game the computer guiding you entices you with cake while graffiti throughout the game states that the cake is indeed a lie."

So that may (or may not) be where the repeated phrase The cake is a lie comes from. Mystery solved, as far as I'm concerned.

This is like other internet/gaming catch phrases -- such as All your base are belong to us which comes from the broken translation of the video game Zero Wing, or Pulling a Leeroy which refers to the funny World of Warcraft video in which a player named Leeroy Jenkins gets bored of all the raid planning and charges in head-first screaming his name out loud.

I've commented on other in-joke phrases that originated with City of Heroes -- Kill Skuls is one, and Jerk hackers and Gone to the Americans! are two others (that are related). But recently I witnessed the birth of a brand new catch-phrase.

There's a player who posts on the message boards who is well known as someone who "farms" -- runs the same mission over and over and over, in order to rack up as much money as possible. Her preferred mission involved behemoths, demonic creatures that are part of the magical cult enemy group known as the Circle of Thorns. This mission is easy for her to farm and magic salvage sells for a great deal more than tech salvage in the game, so she makes a lot of money doing this.

She posts a lot on the boards, and many of her posts boil down to complaints about and suggestions for improving those aspects of the game that affect her directly -- ie, farming. Other posters like to jump all over her posts because they perceive her as selfish and not interested in helping anyone besides herself.

A couple of months ago she made a post speculating on things that the development staff might add to the game in the coming year. Almost immediately, someone responded by saying, "What do you care? You're just going to farm behemoths anyway."

Although a kind of nasty reply to what was (for once) a completely innocent and completely non-self-indulgent post, the phrase You're just going to farm behemoths anyway made a lot of people laugh, because it was partly true. It also proved to be a sort of non sequitur catch-all response to anyone you disagreed with, and has been repeated quite a bit since then.

I don't know if it's the kind of thing that will fade in a month or two, or that might last long enough to expand beyond the scope of City of Heroes, but in the meantime, it's become enough of a joke that someone posted this picture, which purports to show that the phrase has ancient historical roots.

It made me laugh, anyway. ^_^