Hipcrime entered my lexicon with John Brunner's Stand on Zanzibar (1968). What's a Hipcrime?
You committed one when you opened this link. Keep it up. It's our only hope.John Brunner included 15 entries from the Vocab [which is ...ephemeral, if not out-and-out bogus] scattered through the book. Many have used the term 'hipcrime', with genuflection to the shade of John Brunner (1934-1995).
Chad C Mulligan appears as a character in the book:
...pop sociologist Chad C. Mulligan comments wryly on it all, and he is the nearest thing to a hero in this densely peopled book. A Reddit commenter notes:
If Chad Mulligan is an author stand-in, then the treatment is pretty explicitly tongue-in-cheek and meant to take the piss out of the ideas being expressed.
The Mulligan persona has been adopted by actually-hip interwebs folk. See for example Chad C Mulligan, 'Radical Sociologist' via Substack.
Advertisement - The first thing you see when you wake up in the morning.*Art - A Friend of mine in Tulsa, Oklahoma, when I was about eleven years old. I'd be interested to hear from him. There are so many pseudos around taking his name in vain.
Bombshell - When things have gone horribly wrong.
Booster Gang - Synthcoke addicted choombas who have one guiding principle, 'you like something I don't like so I must bash your brains in.'
Bullshit Job - A job one works but doesn't know why. It's purely a job that makes the corporations look like they actually benefit the economy.
Chilled - A state of mind, where we can say for a moment, nothing has gone wrong... yet. See also Bombshell
Choomba - From the neo-African American word Chombata. It means a close friend, loved one, or just anybody.
Corporatism - A thing that no one claims to believe in and yet everyone claims they rule the world.
Corporatist - A sucker.
Corpos - A sucker who thinks they can make it to the top but will always be one step below in the totem pole.
Cyberpsychosis - When you don't feel human any more.
Dishonesty - The default assumption people make about other people.
Drugs - The cheap way to still feel human, it's also the fastest way to stop feeling human.
The Face - Someone who talks a lot about business but like all corporatists has no idea what's actually happening.
Fascism - The end game of all groups with a hierarchy. See also Corporatism.
Handle - We used to think it meant your nickname but it's more real than the name your parents gave you.
*Hip Crime - You committed one when you opened this book. Keep it up. It's our only hope.
*History - Papa Hegel once said that 'all we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history. I know people who can't even learn from what happened this morning.' Hegel must have been taking the long view.
Human - You're human, at least I hope you still are.
*Impossible - Has three meanings:
- I wouldn't like it and when it happens I won't approve.
- I can't be bothered.
- God can't be bothered.
Meaning 3 may perhaps be valid but the others are 101% whaledreck.Inevitable - It's going to happen, and we could have stopped it a while back, but I don't want to. See also impossible.
Just Lucky I Guess - A phrase used by Netrunners, Corpos, and Boosters when they get away with something they should have been shot for.
Lawman - Pseudos who enforce the law, never mind whose law, just the law.
*Leadership - A form of self-preservation exhibited by people with autodestructive imaginations in order to ensure that when it comes to the crunch it'll be someone else's bones which go crack and not their own.
Linguistics - The last hope at preserving culture. Done by capturing the words in a jar and storing it somewhere to be preserved. Hoping someone out there can figure out what the contents of the jars were. See also The Hip Crime Vocab.
*Logic - The principle governing human intellection. Its nature may be deduced from examining the two following propositions, both of which are held by human beings to be true and often by the same people: "I can't so you mustn't," and "I can but you mustn't."
Magrtittes - A faceless bureaucrat who works the bullshit jobs in the corporate offices. See also Pseudos
Meatspace - Tech billionaires debated if this world is a simulation. Actual known simulations always have us return back to the meatspace so when will this simulation end and bring us back to the meatier space.
Megacorp - A booster gang with extra steps.
Midnight Market - A place that sells the stuff the megacorps won't.
Mod - See Rocker.
Netspace - The space where we go to be chilled. Then things go bombshell and we always end up back in meatspace.
Night Market - A place to buy what you actually want.
*Patriotism - A great British writer once said that if he had to choose between betraying his country and betraying a friend he hoped he would have the decency to betray his country. (Amen, brothers and sisters! Amen!)
Petromasculinity - If you've ever had to shout at a passing vehicle "we get it it's huge," you have experienced petromasculinity.
*Population Explosion - Unique in human experience, an event which happened yesterday but which everyone swears won't happen until tomorrow.
Poser - Someone trapped in the shadow of another person's greatness.
Pseudos - A false life that's lived for the sake of the scream sheets and TVs.
Rocker - See Mod.
Samurai - Literally translated as 'land bastards' in history they were more underhanded and treacherous than the ninja. It is no surprise then that they work for Megacorps. See also Corporatists.
Sarcasm - An emotional defense system where the user tries to conceal any actual self expression for the sake of preserving face. Ironically this damages both the user and the person the user is speaking to.
Sneaky - If you can't be stronger than someone you can always out smart them, and if you can't out smart them then you can stealth past them, and if you can't stealth past them you always can cheat them.
Time of the Red - The days when we thought we finally learned our lesson.
Underhand - How megacorps like to frame the business transactions of other megacorps but never their own.
*Unfair - Term applied to advantages enjoyed by other people which we tried to cheat them out of and didn't manage. See also Dishonesty, Sneaky, Underhand and Just Lucky I Guess.
Whaledreck - If I have to explain this one then your brain is made of 101% whaledreck.
*Denotes original Hip Crime Vocab entries by Chad C. Mulligan.