Is there any hope?

March 27, 2008 4:29 PM

Please hope me! Or why hope for help?

I have seen three people this week use "hope me" for "help me"on ask.mefi. A Google search reveals 765 instances of this. Can someone please explain me to how people can mix up "hope me" and "help me"? They don't look alike or even vaguely sound alike and obviously have very different meanings. Is there some regional pronunciation that I am missing here?

posted by TheRaven to writing & language (23 comments total)

It started here and became a MetaFilter in-joke.
posted by trip and a half at 4:32 PM on March 27, 2008

Um, so technically I guess this should be in MetaTalk?
posted by trip and a half at 4:33 PM on March 27, 2008

Scroll down this list of Mefi in-jokes to find a brief explanation.
posted by leesh at 4:33 PM on March 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

And here I thought it was that hope had irrevocably entered the zeitgeist...
posted by lunasol at 4:35 PM on March 27, 2008

I don't know how it started, but it has nothing to do with being a mix-up. It's a joke. A tired, lame joke, but still a joke. "Hope me" is a wacky weird funny way of saying "Give me hope." And since "Help me" is a common way of asking for help when you are hopeless, that means saying "Hope me" instead of "Help me" is so very clever and funny that people cannot help but use it. See? I bet you are laughing right now. Control yourself.
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 4:36 PM on March 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

Wait, it started at Metafilter? I don't believe that somehow...
posted by sweetkid at 4:45 PM on March 27, 2008

I was wondering this too! Now I finally know how babby is formed.
posted by Metroid Baby at 5:02 PM on March 27, 2008 [2 favorites]

Are only 457 google hits for "please hope me." While I haven't looked at each of them, I don't see any that antedate Metafilter so far. I think this one belongs to us.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 5:10 PM on March 27, 2008

My mother owned a series of books when she was a teenager where one of the characters (a young boy) always substituted "hope" for "help" without a touch of irony. This was from the 60s I think but I can't believe that's what people are referencing when they use that joke.
posted by Jeff Howard at 5:10 PM on March 27, 2008

I can't say for sure that there's not some parallel evolution of "help me -> hope me" out in the non-metafilter wilds, but trip and a half's link in the first comment is the only thing I personally associate it with.

Looking through the results for "please hope me" -metafilter, I'm seeing a few things:

- offsite references that either explicitly acknowledge the mefi connection (kottke on injokes)
- offsite references tied to metafilter (monkeyfilter, 9622)
- unrelated (ESL or otherwise) language errors (chinese programmer, algerian needing tech support, genealogical plea)
- unrelated phrases containing this collocation ("please hope me and you are not working!", "please hope me luck!")
- actual usage with unknown provenance (cowboymeme, revme.lj, camerahacker, frenriss.lj.

That's highlights from the first two of the five pages (vs. approx 950 raw ghits) google claims to have for that search.

So, setting aside the question of incoherent or disfluent bad renderings, some possibilities:

1. Every fluent use spawned from the Mefi origin, over time and space.
2. Fluent/jokey usage came to Mefi from elsewhere.
3. Fluent jokey usage developed independently both here (in 2001) and elsewhere (who knows when, likely based in that case on some other independent site of disfluency or typo event).

(2) seems unlikely; we've got a clear, well-remembered origin story for Mefi's use.

Proving (1) is hard; we'd have to contact people who have used it in unaffiliated contexts and track their use back to mefi, which in a span of 7 years since Mefi's origin would involve an awful lot of sharp memories.

Proving (3) is just has hard; we'd have to track down a documented non-mefi origin for the usage, and/or find someone whose use would conclusively prove was not in any way connect to mefi.
posted by cortex at 5:17 PM on March 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

To be clear: "hope" in exchange for "help" is apparently a very plausible mistake, so swapping in the one for the other by itself isn't something we would have any reason to pin on Mefi. Indeed, goliche's English in the 2001 metatalk thread is pretty bad, which fits with the disfuencies Google turned up.

But the specific phrase "please hope me" used by fluent speakers as a request for help, especially in an ironic or bloggish or administrative or customer support context, seems awfully specific, and that's what I'm dealing with above.
posted by cortex at 5:21 PM on March 27, 2008

I thought it started with "Hope me, Obi-Wan, you're my only help" for some reason...but Google does not seem to back me up.
posted by TochterAusElysium at 6:01 PM on March 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

AHA! 1997....thank you Google Groups.
posted by TochterAusElysium at 6:04 PM on March 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

It could just be something they are used to saying in their everyday lives. I am from the south and my mother, who is 70 this year, uses "hope me" for "help me" sometimes. I asked her years ago why she did this, and she said that she had grown up saying this and that her mother had said it too. In fact, a lot of older people here say "hope me". So, I don't think it originated on the Internet in any way.
posted by sapphirebbw at 6:20 PM on March 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

cortex: In all honesty, I think you're over-analyzing the problem. The OP is asking primarily about the usage they've seen here on ask.mefi. That is a direct reference to the goliche thread, usually by old-timers or people who hang out with old-timers. Going back to the thread, there is no reason to believe that goliche was echoing some regionalism. You can see goliche's other comments and it becomes apparent that he/she was pretty much spouting nonsense but managed to create a memorable phrase.

A quick Google of one your first 'unknown provenance' link, leads to this thread, where it is clear that cowboymeme is populated by at least some metafilterians.

So the answer to this question is: The goliche metatalk thread.

Notwithstanding that very few memes are entirely unique and, yes, there may be people in the South who say this or some college students in Nebraska who came up with it independently but it never spread outside their circle or its a common translation mistake among Indonesians learning English or whatever... The answer is

4) Fluent jokey usage developed here (in 2001) though there may be outliers elsewhere (who knows when, likely based in that case on some other independent site of disfluency or typo event).
posted by vacapinta at 6:47 PM on March 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

It could just be something they are used to saying in their everyday lives. I am from the south and my mother, who is 70 this year, uses "hope me" for "help me" sometimes. I asked her years ago why she did this, and she said that she had grown up saying this and that her mother had said it too. In fact, a lot of older people here say "hope me". So, I don't think it originated on the Internet in any way.

Yeah, some English dialects use a word that sounds like hope for the past tense of help. You'll see it spelled "holp" sometimes, to make the connection clear.

It's like how some people say swole and other people say swelled, or some people say dove and other people say dived<>.
posted by nebulawindphone at 6:58 PM on March 27, 2008 [1 favorite]

cortex: In all honesty, I think you're over-analyzing the problem. The OP is asking primarily about the usage they've seen here on ask.mefi. That is a direct reference to the goliche thread, usually by old-timers or people who hang out with old-timers.

Ah; honestly, my gut is saying the same thing. My argument is mainly that it's not a firmly answerable question, unless we can do with all apparent spot-on usages what you've done with the cowboymeme link. Which may be totally doable, but unless someone does the work the possibility of parallel development remains (even if I'm not betting on it, personally).

In other words, I'm right there with you...

4) Fluent jokey usage developed here (in 2001) though there may be outliers elsewhere (who knows when, likely based in that case on some other independent site of disfluency or typo event).

...on that, but I think it's worth hedging one's bets a bit on etymology/etiology questions, if only out of deference to the rampant cock-sureness with which folks often go about being wrong about such things.
posted by cortex at 7:04 PM on March 27, 2008

...and so that languagehat doesn't get you!
posted by jacalata at 7:35 PM on March 27, 2008

Whats all this business about CAT scans?
posted by everichon at 7:57 PM on March 27, 2008

Cat-scan.com (now porn) was one of Matt's original FPP's.
posted by jacalata at 9:00 PM on March 27, 2008

I love -- love -- a lot of MeFi in-jokes. But then, I also find the Rickroll funny every single time.

It totally bums me out when they confuse and bewilder people, so I'm glad the wiki has that list.
posted by loiseau at 9:14 PM on March 27, 2008

the same way they can use 'me to' for 'to me' (see original post).
I help that hopes.
posted by arcadia at 6:51 AM on March 28, 2008

One of the "unknown provenance" examples cortex found is from Mefi member Rev. Syung Myung Me.
posted by mbrubeck at 11:50 AM on March 28, 2008