Lamer

Lamer is a jargon or slang name applied to individuals thought to be lacking in maturity, social skills, technical competence or intelligence. It is applied in a variety of contexts, though the proliferation of computer-mediated communication media such as IRC or BBSes may be partly responsible for bringing the term into common parlance. This term is thought to originate in skateboarding slang, since being lame (i.e. paralyzed or otherwise "stiff in the body") may be dangerous or fatal in the sport. It does not imply that the person in question is actually paralyzed; they are simply thought to be bad at skateboarding. The term came into more general use, applied to anyone thought to be "lame", either physically or (more often) intellectually. With the rise of electronic bulletin board systems, some bulletin board users may have begun using skateboard slang in application to users of these systems. A lamer was thus a term applied to incompetent users of bulletin board systems. This may have originated as far back as on the first bulletin boards run on TRS-80 and Apple II computers. The opposite of lamers were the elite. In the subculture of the home computer era of Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari ST and the like in the 1980s, lamer was the standard name for anyone who had a larger mouth than skills. Typically this included "programmers" writing demos using demomaker software. Often, internet users interchange lamer with Llamah which is more focused but also less harsh.

Internet context

When applied to users of the internet, in particular users of IRC, Usenet, mailing lists, or other electronically-mediated communication, the term "lamer" may mean one or more of the following:
  • One with exceptionally poor typing skills or grammar, who uses what is considered to be an excessive number of emoticons, or who uses exclamation marks or other punctuation to excess
  • A script kiddie
  • One with little or no respect for authority or convention in the context of using some communication facility
  • Anyone with any variety of behaviors that are thought to be annoying
  • Anyone who's ruining the game for others in multi-player online games like Counter-Strike or Everquest, e.g. by standing into a door, thus blocking other players or by Teamkilling

External links

 

<< PreviousWord BrowserNext >>
alamo bowl
single phase electric power
typical warbler
superorganism
slide projector
hachiman
rei hino
jean nouvel
luna (sailor moon)
artemis (sailor moon)
diana (sailor moon)
william thornton
waverider
estradiol
confederation
string quartet no. 8 (shostakovich)
retro
silver nitrate
strategic planning
warriors of the net
team building
oda nobuyuki
the pleasure garden (1952 movie)
spriting
intellectual
leadership development
walter benjamin
mentoring
modern library
package deal fallacy
saiyan saga
wario land: super mario land 3
occupational safety and health administration
james a. michener
managing change
alice chess
alexander carlyle
schottky diode
nikolaus otto
jan steen
robert b. dickey
stage combat
charles reade
tails