Is there any method in this madness?
May 25, 2022 1:05 PM   Subscribe

So, this list fell out of one of my old notebooks today. I definitely wrote it, but I have zero recollection of doing so and no clue as to what it could mean. Was it just some random word association game? Am I an unwitting sleeper spy who found my activation code? WHY IS WORDS? (mods, feel free to delete if this is too chatfiltery...)

I posed this question on Twitter and the best guess so far is that it's a made-up version of Captain America's list of events/topics he missed out on while he was frozen. I think that's plausible, as my ex was a big fan of superhero movies and it stands to reason that we would have paused the movie specifically to read it, and that we probably would've had a lot of fun riffing on it and coming up with our own. The only issue with this theory are the ones like "my teacher is an idiot" or "carrot problem."

I like the suggestion that it's a list of potential dog names, but I don't think that's it either.

Who knows. Do you know? I sure don't! And it's driving me crazy!
posted by a.steele to Grab Bag (40 answers total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
Boat or racing horse names?
posted by brainwane at 1:10 PM on May 25, 2022


Definitely seems has a lot of "new things that are big now/new words that didn't used to be" But, WORDS ARE HARD, so...
posted by Windopaene at 1:10 PM on May 25, 2022


Yeah, my first thought is "references that might date a work, one way or another," but it's not perfect.
posted by praemunire at 1:13 PM on May 25, 2022


"Write down the first noun I hear from each person today", MetaFilter tags?
posted by Dotty at 1:17 PM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


When was this written, roughly?

Slap bracelets and Judge Ito are from when I was in school. Lava lamp seems like a much older reference. Peanut allergies like a much newer reference. (I guess fonts are timeless.) Sounds like a nonsense poem about random stuff to me, but I don't know.
posted by eotvos at 1:17 PM on May 25, 2022


Do/did you use Reddit? Is it possibly a list of Reddit threads that you were following (or wanted to share with your ex)? (I Googled a few of them with Reddit and one that jumped out at me was "What was the moment that made you say 'My teacher is an idiot"?' so that actually tracks.)
posted by dlugoczaj at 1:18 PM on May 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


Yeah I think this is likely just a list of cultural memes from [some range of time].

I think running down the origin of the carrot problem will be the key to unlocking the why and when.
posted by phunniemee at 1:22 PM on May 25, 2022


I think running down the origin of the carrot problem will be the key to unlocking the why and when.

There was actually a relevant Reddit thread about that, too, although I couldn't click on it because NSFW. (Had to do with what one would do if one sent out a video of oneself doing something unspeakable with a carrot.)
posted by dlugoczaj at 1:23 PM on May 25, 2022


Response by poster: To answer a couple of questions: It was definitely written sometime in the last 10-ish years. And I do use reddit (really good theory!) although I can't imagine being interested enough in most of these things to follow reddit threads about them.

Great answers so far, thanks for humoring this silly little mystery of mine. :)
posted by a.steele at 1:28 PM on May 25, 2022


Halloween costume brainstorm session? You know those "Japanese mundane jokey costumes"?
posted by bleep at 1:30 PM on May 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


Bitcoin wallet recovery keys?
posted by tiamat at 1:38 PM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


These feel like potential band names to me.
posted by Ragged Richard at 1:44 PM on May 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


Best answer: Bad suggestions for baby names.
posted by offog at 1:48 PM on May 25, 2022 [13 favorites]


Are these things to do with specific generations? Like “Remember Livestrong bracelets?” Or “where were you on 9/11”? They all seem situated specifically in time.
posted by chesty_a_arthur at 1:57 PM on May 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


Starting points for password guessing (or security question guessing) for people if you only know their age.

A list of terms that may be considered “memes” or may not, depending on your meme alignment.

Words and phrases to check if there are different style standards for them that are more particular than casual usage when publishing an essay.

The beginning of inventing a personal cypher.
posted by Mizu at 1:57 PM on May 25, 2022


Response by poster: Still open to other suggestions, but I think offog's answer makes the most sense, at least in my gut. I've been staring at this thing all day trying to remember what it is, and I'm almost positive it was written with my ex while we were riffing on...something? A lot of the items seem to build/follow from a previous item (e.g. livestrong>silly bandz>slap bracelet) which makes me think it was written in a single brainstorm session. For instance, I think "carrot problem" is not a real thing, but a silly take on "potato famine."

The elements that make me think it might be stupid baby names are the inclusion of "Baby Name," the spelling out of "nine eleven," and the (hilarious to me) hypothetical scenario of explaining to someone that your baby's name, Beyonce, is a "family name." It would also be funny to have your driver's license say Fake ID or to write "My teacher is an idiot" on all your class assignments.

Maybe? I don't know! It's the best I can come up with.

I did ask my ex if he could remember what it was, and he thought it could have been part of some group game where we were trying to think of things that fit in specific categories. Are there any games like this? Especially ones where trendy/silly answers might be encouraged?
posted by a.steele at 2:23 PM on May 25, 2022 [10 favorites]


Actually I thought the list reminded me of a game of Scattergories but the words all have to have the same first letter.
posted by bleep at 2:48 PM on May 25, 2022 [3 favorites]


All the words and phrases seem to end on an unstressed syllable.
posted by amtho at 2:59 PM on May 25, 2022


I was hoping it was alternative lyrics to We Didn't Start the Fire, but it sadly doesn't match up.
posted by esker at 3:21 PM on May 25, 2022 [4 favorites]


Yeah first instinct is a game of some kind
posted by wellifyouinsist at 3:25 PM on May 25, 2022


I assumed it was a group game as well. We used to play a family game we called "The Dictionary Game" that was later produced as "Balderdash" and when we randomly found a slip of paper from one of our games it was always amusing and confusing at the same time.
posted by tacodave at 3:29 PM on May 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


Best answer: In case it's helpful in jogging a memory, I'd guess you wrote it in the fall of 2012 based on the inclusion on Skyfall (released November 2012), The Avengers (released May 2012), Dane Cook (controversy in July 2012 over a joke referencing the Aurora CO mass shooting), Lance Armstrong (formally charged and stripped of titles - October 2012), Boo Boo (Here Comes Honey Boo Boo first aired in August 2012), and Zune (discontinued June 2012). Those struck me as needing to be current events to be included in such a list as a year or two later half of them wouldn't come to mind.
posted by rube goldberg at 4:30 PM on May 25, 2022 [18 favorites]


It looks like a list of answers to a trivia quiz.
posted by dg at 5:28 PM on May 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


I wondered if you were doing a memory-technique exercise and had to come up with a long list of random things. I did one once where you had to visualize walking through your house and putting things down on the furniture to create a visual memory of the list, and my made up list of things was random like this, with some of the same sequential word-association patterns and then some totally random leaps.

Beyoncé actually IS a family name... It’s her mom’s maiden name (Louisiana Creole ancestry), originally spelled Beyincé but a racist clerk spelled it wrong on Miss Tina’s birth certificate.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 5:30 PM on May 25, 2022 [5 favorites]


This reminds me of the lists of words that get created for a charades game.
posted by ananci at 6:36 PM on May 25, 2022


Most of these references are from the pop culture zeitgeist of the 00s. Some are from the 90s, and some are from the first couple years of the 10s. But it's almost like your group was told to write down as many specifically 00s words/phrases as you can think of in 5 minutes and then give the slip of paper to the host. And you all had a bit of drunken fun with the exercise while you were doing it.
posted by naju at 6:49 PM on May 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


Hipster beer names.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 8:32 PM on May 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


making your own set of cards against humanity cards
posted by onya at 10:12 PM on May 25, 2022 [1 favorite]


This seems unlikely but it’s been hysterical to red them as euphemisms for sex acts (speedboat, carrot problem) and body parts (jukebox, lil champion.)
posted by kapers at 11:22 PM on May 25, 2022 [5 favorites]


Potential Usernames ?
posted by St. Peepsburg at 11:34 PM on May 25, 2022 [2 favorites]


Updated lyric ideas for We Didn't Start the Fire?
posted by miles1972 at 12:32 AM on May 26, 2022 [1 favorite]


It could be a reference list someone compiled as prep work for a story or screenplay set in 2012.
posted by Silvery Fish at 3:24 AM on May 26, 2022


Possible passwords, but why would you have persisted beyond the first 10.
posted by SemiSalt at 4:49 AM on May 26, 2022


I could imagine writing a list like this in 2012 as a time capsule: "will anyone remember these things twenty years hence? Will I?" Especially with a friend or a group, a quickly forgotten lark.
posted by bendybendy at 8:09 AM on May 26, 2022 [2 favorites]


A list of possible Starbucks Names
posted by grateful at 9:17 AM on May 26, 2022


Workshopping possible answers to those crappy security questions. Except instead of, “What was the name of your first pet?” it was, “What’s the last thing you saw on TV?”
posted by Ookseer at 10:10 AM on May 26, 2022


Seems like it was done in one moment perhaps as part of a group exercise. What exercise? Answer unknown.
posted by zerobyproxy at 11:04 AM on May 26, 2022 [1 favorite]


Things you can find on this crazy, blue marble we call Earth?
posted by dngrangl at 11:50 AM on May 26, 2022


The last entry - Cash 4 Gold - looks like it is written with a different pen.

It's odd there are almost no google results for "lil champion" - baby onesies and an obscure German hiphop group?

Can anyone read what is crossed out beneath "Fake I.D."?

The writing out of "nine eleven" seems like it may be a clue.
posted by Rumple at 5:06 PM on May 26, 2022 [1 favorite]


If this *was* written in 2012, as rube goldberg suggests upthread, then it would have been written the same year that this XKCD comic strip about bad baby names came out: Baby Names (from 2-1-12)

I vote that the list is bad baby names and somehow inspired by the strip.
posted by Tesseractive at 9:39 PM on May 28, 2022 [3 favorites]


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