Althouse: "'Kris, can you predict what might become this season’s popular buzzword?' asked the host — to which Wu responded, 'Skr skr skr skr skr skr skr skrrrr,' varying each monosyllable’s pitch."

August 8, 2018

"'Kris, can you predict what might become this season’s popular buzzword?' asked the host — to which Wu responded, 'Skr skr skr skr skr skr skr skrrrr,' varying each monosyllable’s pitch."

"Tellingly, Wu did not elaborate on the colorful colloquialism: Though widely used, its meaning is head-scratchingly difficult to pin down."

From "How ‘Skr’ Took Over the Chinese Internet/A brief history of the meaningless hip-hop term that inspired countless viral memes" (Sixth Tone).

Here's some audio, for what it's worth: "Kris Wu - SKR."

14 comments:

madAsHell said...: Kris, can you predict what might become this season’s popular buzzword?' asked the host — to which Wu responded, 'Skr skr skr skr skr skr skr skrrrr,' varying each monosyllable’s pitch.

This was entirely scripted. Also see the etymology of "quiz".; 8/8/18, 8:43 AM
Dave Begley said...: ‘Skers = Huskers = Football; 8/8/18, 8:47 AM
The Crack Emcee said...: I have a vast collection of Japanese Rap, but I'm mostly into Shibuya-kei now. It's too cartoony to pass up and a great time-waster when I need to smile.

This is cool, too. I'ma add it to iTunes. I think Skr is the "skeet, skeet, skeet" of Japan.; 8/8/18, 8:49 AM
tcrosse said...: Singing Frogs.
kré ke ke kex koax koax; 8/8/18, 8:55 AM
Mike Sylwester said...: Another good buzzword would be strzok.; 8/8/18, 8:57 AM
Nonapod said...: Wasn't aware Hiphop was much of a thing in China yet. There's a feller named MC Hotdog who raps in Mandarin. Think he's Taiwanese, not mainland though.; 8/8/18, 9:08 AM
Fernandinande said...: I blame slavery.; 8/8/18, 9:09 AM
Infinite Monkeys said...: I've notice in Chinese and Korean hip-hop that "flow" is still "flow" instead of being translated into the language.; 8/8/18, 9:59 AM
Char Char Binks, Esq. said...: Ching ching, ching chong.; 8/8/18, 10:08 AM
BJM said...: Wasn't that the sound the trees made in one of Philip K. Dick's stories?; 8/8/18, 11:39 AM
Darrell said...: Rap is short for crap, as everyone should know. The Chinese are carrying on the tradition admirably.; 8/8/18, 12:52 PM
RK said...: I bet it's easy to translate "yo yo yo" into Chinese.; 8/8/18, 1:39 PM
gadfly said...: This is from Vox:

We’ve had a lot of Twitter dustups in recent months, and most of them seem to hinge on the same problem: We don’t know how to interpret what’s written on Twitter, and that’s been repeatedly weaponized by people who do know how to interpret what’s on Twitter.

Twitter is weird. A huge amount of what’s written there is metatextual commentary on other tweets intended for a knowing audience reading in a specific moment. It’s an ephemeral, self-referential mode of discourse that is unfortunately not ephemeral or tied to reference points at all — in fact, it’s designed to be broadcast, archived, searched, and embedded by anyone, in any context, at any point in the future.

We write for an audience we think we know, in a vernacular they’ll understand, using reference points they’re familiar with. Six years later, our tweets are weaponized to an audience we don’t know, thick with terms they understand differently, with the reference points completely absent

The canonical example is Justine Sacco, a PR executive who was bored during a 2013 layover at Heathrow and tweeted the bad joke, “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” The tweet went viral, Sacco’s name was trending nationally as she was in the air, and she’d lost her job by the time she landed.; 8/8/18, 2:04 PM
mikee said...: I dislike some people's ideologies. This makes me a target for their hatred, while it should make them reconsider their ideologies.

I am the only arbiter of me, mine, and myself that I will accept.; 8/8/18, 11:15 PM