DC Inside
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
DC Inside (디시인사이드 or 디씨인사이드; see below), DC for short, is a digital camera website and an internet forums in South Korea. It started specializing in digital cameras and photos, and became extremely popular among Korean internet users from 2000 due to its unique forum culture. The popularity of DC Inside has declined after 2003.
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[edit] Name
DC stands for Digital Cameras, which were originally the main subject of the website. In 2003, insisting that DC Inside is a violation of trademark right, Intel Inside requested the name of DC Inside to be changed. [1] Patent office of South Korea dismissed the request. [2]
The official name of the website is 디시인사이드 where the Hangul character 시 corresponds to Latin alphabet C. However, many Koreans pronounce and write C as 씨 with fortis, and call the website 디씨인사이드 or 디씨 for short.
[edit] History
DC Inside opened in 2000. In the early period, its users were mostly early adopters of electronic devices, especially digital cameras.
[edit] Old Terminology
DC Inside users have contributed to the invention of various new words among Korean Internet users, most of which are rarely used after 2003 (both inside DC Inside and outside). Here is a list of the expressions which, although not commonly used in these days, have historical significance.
[edit] Ahehheh
Ahehheh (아햏햏) is a word that characterizes the early DC Inside culture. It is probably originaed as a variation of ahaha (아하하), a laughter in Korean language. Both due to confusion about its origin and as a mischief, it has been used to replace almost every word in the language, as dude of English. Since ㅎ is almost never used in modern Korean writings as a syllable coda (i.e. batchim (받침)), its pronounciation was controversial.
[edit] Other heh-based words
Heh (햏) is the second and the third syllable of ahehheh, and it was used in many ways reminiscent of Buddhist and Taoist concepts of Mu and Tao. For example, Deukheh (득햏, literally getting heh) was DC Inside version of Deukdo (득도, enlightenment), and Hehja (햏자, a user of DC Inside), is a shortened form of Suhehja (수햏자), which in tern derived from the word Suhaengja (수행자).
[edit] Bangbeop
Bangbeop (방법, literally method or means) is used to mean attack, usually on-line. Bangbeop was done in many ways, including computer hacking. It was waged on websites or people that Hehja deem antagonistic. This practice have been criticized by mass media.
[edit] Current culture
During the presidential election in 2002 and the subsequent general election, dcinside.com produced a series of parodies against corrupt or dishonet candidates.
[edit] Galleries
Users, including but not limited to pyeins, frequent one or more message boards of their favorite topics. Such a message board is called a gallery (갤러리). As the name implies, there exists a rule that each post in a gallery should include an image that pertains to the gallery topic, and non-compliant messages are usually removed by moderators who are commonly referred to as an alba (알바).
Topics range from generic ones such as sociopolitics, science and sports, to very specific ones such as individual celebrities (actors/actresses, singers, etc). New galleries with other topics are set up if they are requested repeatedly by a large number of users and viewed as appropriate by the site staff.
Many galleries host a varying number of loyal users (many of them being pyeins), sometimes forming an intimate, closely-knit community. Behavioral traits exhibited by these users, both positive and negative, often define the characteristics of the respective galleries. Personal dramas among individual users sometimes escalate to inter-gallery flame wars, although not too often, due to this intimacy.
Some galleries have gained external fame or notoriety by participation in current issues. One such example is the science gallery (과학 갤러리, often abbreviated 과갤 gwa-gael), which played a major role in the Hwang Woo-Suk scandal by discovering or publicizing a number of key evidence of research fabrication; it has since been antagonized by Hwang's supporters.
[edit] External links
- (ko) Official Home Page
