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Comment by peter_l_downs | Hacker News Reader

Doesn't make sense to me (19 years old) or any of my friends either. The point is that it's ridiculous. I think largely in part to the internet, absurdism may now be part of our youth culture. It may always have been, but it's pretty easy for weird things done by close friends (original Harlem Shake video) to become hugely popular over the internet.

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Just because something doesn't make sense doesn't mean you can call it "absurdism".

It also has to catch on as a popular thing in society. I like the term "absurdism".

You may like how it sounds, but if you think it means "being popular and making no sense", you don't understand what it is.

Well you prompted me to check whether I understand what "absurd" and "ism" mean because it seemed pretty apt to me. Still does after checking, at least for the standards of a comment on an article, as opposed to say a language semantics journal.

Being popular gives us the "ism" part, by definition 3 at http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-ism :

"a tendency of behaviour, action or opinion belonging to a class or group of persons; the result of a doctrine, ideology, principle, or lack thereof"

The "absurd" part also fits pretty well: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/absurd "stupid or unreasonable; silly in a humorous way"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absurdism

To clarify, the original use here was "absurdism may now be part of our youth culture", which is certainly something one could argue, but I'd strongly disagree with.

If he wanted to use the definition you're constructing, I think he should have said "little absurdisms like this are a common part of our youth culture". That, I could agree with.

I didn't realize this would be controversial. I meant "absurdism" in a non-philosophical sense. The way you phrased it -- "little absurdisms like this are a common part of our youth culture" -- sums it up perfectly.

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