Grup
One of my colleagues has sparked our students’ interest in IRC. He and the students have been suggesting I swing by their channel, especially since I’m occasionally the topic of conversation. I applaud my colleague’s barrierlessness, but my dreams of things to do with my family and of things to code and of grant proposals to write are piling up in the corner. IRC will do little to reduce this pile and will do a lot of make it taller.
However, I amused him once. And that’s what this mini-story is about. As I logged in the first time, I looked through my mind for a nonsensical username. The funny word that came to me is “grup.” Later, I did some Googling and found that my choice was incredibly ironic. Here’s how the Urban Dictionary defines grup:
A grown-up in the minority, finding themselves among younger people. Coined by Adrian Spies, writer of the Star Trek episode featuring a post-apocalyptic world where only teenagers survived.
The Georgia Strait, a pop culture rag based out of Canada, offers a similar definition:
Grups is a recently coined marketing buzzword branding 30- to 50-year-olds who aren’t prepared to relinquish their young-at-heartedness. It’s lifted from an episode of the old Star Trek TV show set on a planet with no grownups (grups).
What a fitting username for a professor who’s chatting it up on IRC.
Louise, a plague-infected grup from the planet Miri.