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Comment by ARandomerDude | Hacker News Reader

Contextually, it seems like "goated" means "excellent," which is somewhat bizarre (or "counterintuitive" as they say these days).

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For me, "goat" in Internet context always maps to _that_ vintage single-image website. Definitely not something positive, more like traumatizing.

goat** != goat. I honestly never made the connection between the shock website and the animal.

The root domain is pronounced "goat sex," although from the earliest days I'd heard of it, people were referring to it as just "goatsie" domain name goatse.

goat -> greatest of all time. doesn't seem counterintuitive. its jargon most often seen in sport literature.

One of the car rental companies has started using it in their commercials. I do wonder how much of a generational divide there is on using it.

The issue for me is it looks like an accidental autocorrect of the word “goatse” which internet users from an earlier pre-Facebook era may find more familiar than the verbifying of what was an acronym that is starting to be used as the original word but in a new adjective way.

It’s a really commonly used among gen z. It’s used to mean it’s really good/one of the best. Eg these tacos are goated.

I've definitely heard of "goat" as a noun meaning that, but "webp is such a goated format" sounds more to me like the writer thinks people try to laud it as the goat when it actually isn't. I guess it's because it sounds like the passive voice; "is goated" makes it sound like someone else is doing the goat-ing, at which point for something subjective and desired like "goat", "goating" sounds like it's being used as a more modern slang for "astroturfing" or something.

> I've definitely heard of "goat" as a noun meaning that, but "webp is such a goated format" sounds more to me like the writer thinks people try to laud it as the goat when it actually isn't.

Funnily enough the article kind of does that, doesn't it.

WebP is a decade older than "state of the art" for this, and that difference costs a significant number of bytes.

Have not seen it in common use. I think most non-native English speakers will associate with it being an ugly format.

It is in common usage among gamers.

"goated" sounds like an awful thing, if they capitalized it like "GOATed" I'd at least have recognized it but still find the "ed" out of place.

Well then it should be "a goat format" instead of goated...

> Well then it should be "a goat format" instead of goated...

First Google search result when I googled for 'goat format':

> https://www.goatformat.com/

Same. I interpreted the title to mean it was somehow messed up or broken in some way.

I'm continually amused that this has become such a common expression. The first time I remember hearing something similar was in Infinite Jest where one character was the P.G.O.A.T (Prettiest Girl Of All Time).

Yes it basically means superb, it comes from G.O.A.T (greatest of all time) but it means it has reached the status to fight for GOAT.

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