Trash-talk
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Trash-talk is a form of boast or insult that is common in sports and other competitions. It is usually used as a way to intimidate the opposition, but can also be used as humor. It is characterized by wild exaggeration and improbable similes, such as, "Your team can't run! You run like honey on ice!" (that is, stiffly and slowly). Bad puns and other wordplay are also characteristic of trash-talk. Pointing out articles that discuss the weaknesses in a rival team, is not trash-talk. This is commonly referred to as a discussion topic. This can intiate a trash-talk environment, if one of the participants in the dialog is immature.
Often, a rivalry or cross-team competition is the source of trash-talk. When trash-talk is used in a humorous way, there is a common etiquette. Typically, it is not appropriate to engage in trash-talk if you do not have an interest in the item being trash-talked. For example, talking trash about a fan's team when one doesn't even follow the sport crosses the line from being trash-talk to being an insult. Devolving into personal attacks or attacks on your opponent's family (apart from their mothers) is inappropriate. Trash-talk should be done with respect to others on a personal level. Respect to others should come foremost in all forms of communication. Being disrespectful to others and labeling it trash-talk is known as self hiding or infant cover-up. It is much like insulting someone and trying to mask it by saying, I was just kidding.
Trash-talk, typed or spoken, is also commonly used among video game players. The advent of voice chat such as is found on Xbox Live or in such games as Battlefield 2 or the Halo series has made trash-talking much faster and easier. In the case of video game trash-talk, insults tend to be focused on the player's game-play skill level, but are also commonly in the form of racial, ethnic or sexual slurs. Where players once had to stop playing in order to type out their insults on the keyboard. Now, voice chat permits players to easily talk trash without pausing their play. One side effect of this may be that players once shrouded in anonymity now inadvertently may reveal their age range by virtue of the pitch of their voice, thus allowing older, more mature gamers to detect the children among them, and avoid playing with them in the future. The newest addition to trash-talking is the "I am alive and you are dead" dance, which started with the game Gears of War. It is done when the rest of a player's team is dead by taking cover and rapidly crouching, making the player's character grunt. This is meant to taunt teammates instead of the opposing team's players, by showing that they are better than the rest of the team. A variation of this is "teabagging", in which a player kills his opponent and then rapidly crouches repeatedly to simulate humping.
[edit] Antonym: treasure-talk
On January 17, 2007, American humorist Stephen Colbert displayed what he called treasure-talk, the opposite of trash talk because it is meant to encourage the targeted team rather than disparage them, but delivered in the same confrontational braggadocio style. Speaking of an upcoming New Orleans Saints game on that night's episode of The Colbert Report, the main character said, "Hey, Saints! You "saint" gonna lose! Drew Brees is gonna tame the Chicago Bears like St. Corbinian tamed an actual bear in the the eighth century!"
