HellMOO memes
HellMOO is interesting in a sociological sense for a million reasons, not the least of which is the rapid cycling of trends in writing. HellMOO is large enough to generate them (or appropriate them from elsewhere) but small enough that they disseminate efficiently. Let us chronicle some of them:
You are that king
There was a time when people were often heard speaking of a king, one just and yet terrible, powerful and humble. A complicated one, but a legendary one, one who will one day rise up to such heights as we have never seen. It is you. You are that king. This whole meme is probably one of the few decent things that came out of Bioshock.
Pro-tips
[chatnet] Rambo says, "what skills should i pick at chargen for a good guns person"
[chatnet] Sakiko says, "protip: guns use reflex and cool only so just max those and dump the rest in endurance for drugs"
[chatnet] Rambo says, "awesome thanks"
[chatnet] Axl says, "lol"
[chatnet] Geddy says, "get out"
As seen in the example above, pro-tips most often come from non-pros (though usually not complete newbies) who may believe themselves pro or at least on the road to professionalism (pro-ness). Due to this, pro-tips have an estimated 50% chance to contain poor advice. Actual pros have no need to precede their advice with the term “pro-tip”, as their pro status and the fact that they are giving a tip are both self-evident.
Misspellings
The intentional misspelling of certain words (or unspecific words in specific ways) is a common occurrence on HellMOO nets. What is being misspelled and how is constantly changing, but persistent trends include:
- “dooder” and “dood” can be used to replace just about any part of a word, especially if it’s annoying to spell. Notable examples are the Missile Comdooder journal (which existed, and was a take on the Missile Commander quest), Doodazil Dooder (formerly Manazil Manor), and referring to the Salamander mutation as “Saladooder”.
- this came about as the result of a certain chat filter applied to players with exceptionally low brains stats. The phrase 'man' is replaced with 'dood'.
- Making a word classier (and generally better) by doubling up on its last consonant (if it ends in one) and adding an ‘e’. In other words, “Hell” becomes “Helle” and “butts” becomes “buttes”.
- Replacing “ght” with “ite”. For example, “fight” becomes “fite” and “fighting” becomes “fiting”.
- Replacing “er” with “aire”, especially when creating the word “fuckaire”.
- “Zeplin” for “zeppelin”, the result of an unfortunate jingle on the LOXA corp’s soda machines that was referencing the DRS corporation destroying one of their zeppelins. (“remember the zeplin!”)
- “Tolkein” for “talking”, particularly “that’s what I’m Tolkien about.”
- “Czech” for “check”, particularly “hey, czech this out.”
- “Monstre” for “monster.”
- “Donut” for “do not”, presumably a head-nod to a staple food fixation for many players.
“Treating him/her like gold”.
A good, sincere ragequit in the HellMOO world can be remembered for a long time. This one comes from a tragic situation in which a player became disturbed and agitated over his unrequited love with a corpmate. In the mails explaining his decision to quit, he used the phrase “I treated her like gold, shut the fuck up”, which caught on.
Misuse of personal pronouns
This stems from an infamous grammatical error in one of HellMOO’s oldest sex messages: “fondle she with on hand”. There are actually, of course, two errors present – “she” should be “her” and “on” should be “one”. The former has lead to most personal pronouns being replaced in instances with “he” and “she”. Example:
[SHIT] Jerko says, "I just saw McScroggins in the sewers"
[SHIT] Stalin says, "did you kill he?"
[SHIT] Jerko says, "no, i think it's morally wrong to participate in PVP in games"
[SHIT] Stalin says, "i agree, hi5 bro"
[SHIT] Jerko says, "hey btw did you try those new tampons i was telling you about"
[SHIT] Stalin says, "yeah it felt like i didn't have one in at all lol"
Tildes
See help ~ in game for an explanation~
Goonshit
Perhaps the first HellMOO meme to originate after the p-wipe, the term “Goonshit” comes from the player Daube, and is used as a pejorative to describe somethingawful.com members, though recently, it has been taken up and used often by Goonshit themselves in an altered, less direct form, such as Goonshitte and GOONSHITZ, much the same as other pejorative terms being used colloquially by their original targets.
a bloo bloo
Relatively new as of 2010, “a bloo bloo” is a disparaging way of describing crying. Its exact origin is unknown, but sources credit Berrik for propagating its widespread chatnet use. Most likely though, it came from Achewood, which basically used it as what comes out when you're crying so hard that's the only noise you can really make.
- It is from Achewood, but I think I'm the first person to use it regularly on hellmoo. Berrik 03:42, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
Elf magick
HellMOO is a hostile post-apocalyptic futurescape, so there is a lot of hyper advanced technology and many twisted mutations. What one might not expect is the presence of magic. While HellMOO does not feature magic outright, it does feature suspiciously magic-like abilities through the use of the Focus skill, often referred to as "elf magick". The first real Focus min-maxer, Merlin, was aware of this fact enough to name his player appropriately.