Dudes and Doodles – The Weird Side of the Internet

Dudes and Doodles – The Weird Side of the Internet – by Liam Sweeny.

Dude. I mean dude really. There is absolutely no one alive that lived when the word “dude” had not lived. It is old, very old, and didn’t always mean what it does now. In the 1880s, we had guys that dressed like dandies and they, well… so basically they were hipsters of the pre-twentieth-century. And they were called ‘dudes’, possibly after ‘Yankee Doodle.’ Cause a guy sticks a feather in his cap is a little hipstery. So the first hipster may have been Yankie Doodle, or just Doodle.

Dude, for a long time, meant flashy effeminate. Dude ranches got that name because they attracted vacationers that showed up fancy dressed and dandylike.

And then it got into black and Mexican-American culture, where it started as an insult on zoot suits, but evolved into the word that everybody uses every day.

And dude is still the most used word of its kind, becating out “bro.”

What I love about ‘dude’ is that as soon as someone says it, you know they’re not just some general model stuffed suit. They say dude and it feels like they sit on the couch and eat cereal sometimes too. They’re winging it in life just like the rest of us. Of course, it’s got to be the right kind of “dude.” A forced dude will not do, nor will a “dude” drowning in theatrics, because that’s probably just mockery anyway.

And most people these days can use dude. It’s not gender specific anymore, and it can apply to anything. It’s a word that is ours. All of ours.

I’m going to propose an alternate word to bring back the history of dude while leaving dude to be the affectionate word we need. I propose “doodle.” Let’s dignify today’s hipsters, who I’m sure would hate this, then slowly claim it for their own.

Merry Christmas dudes and doodles.

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