Etymology and lXicography are fascinating subjects, dedicated to understanding how language develops as it does, and offering some insight into the way we speak and write today. However, despite centuries of study, eminent linguists are at a loss as to X-plain one thing: why bogans will pay for anything with the letter X on it.
Like backpackers to a sperm bank, bogans began to gravitate towards any product with a large (often colourful) ‘X’ on the packaging. The trend was slow in forming. First, perhaps, was Xmas. The bogan, with its love of tXt-friendly abbreviations – well before tXting X-isted – embraced Xmas, possibly the first step in this process. A basic, secular way of taking Jesus out of Jesus’ birthday, Xmas spoke to the bogan need for simplicity, even as they spent a great deal of time decrying the political correctness gone mad of a fictional nativity scene at a fictional school being cancelled in order to avoid offending local terrorists.
Around the same time, bogan forebears fell in love with INXS, a band whose simple, personalised plate-ready moniker suggested that despite their stunning international success, they simply arrived before their time. Soon, quick-thinking marketing types were thumping every product they had with a massive X. The X was closely linked to X-tremeness, and despite the fact that these products were often X-tremely shit, X-tremely X-pensive and X-tremely unnecessary, bogans adopted them in droves.
Pepsi wanted to sell diet pepsi to bogan males, so labelled it Pepsi MAX. Porn wasn’t proper porn unless it was XXX. Simon Cowell realised that Pop Idol was shit, so made it again and called it X-Factor, and conquered the UK. Functional water absolutely had to have a variety called XXX. Hollywood X-ecutives also moved in. They created the X-Files to fan the flames of bogan conspiracy theories. They then skipped a whole bunch of steps in the creative process – including plot, character and script – and did two things; hired Vin Diesel and made a film called XXX, secure in the knowledge that bogans would flock to see a film with that many Xs. That the film contained zero faux-lesbianism (this X, being silent, is incidentally confusing to the bogan) was only ameliorated by a scene involving Diesel snowboarding faster than an avalanche, just like they would expect to see in the X-games.
Bogans soon began inserting the letter X into names that it had no place being in in the first place, pumping out Jaxon after Saxon.The bogan has yet to discover The xx, although it can’t be long now. Also, after creating so many new X-isting new generation bogans, the older bogan – some from generation X – often realises that there is one X it can’t stand. Its X-husband. Or the X-chromosome.
X
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X-Treme Bogan Hangover today…
I was better off calling in sick today, and not Monday…
xavier xellis
No first comment for you today fiona
It was good until you started grasping at straws.
“They created the X-Files to fan the flames of bogan conspiracy theories.”
“x-husband” .. “x-chromosome” …. really now?
How many series of the X-Files do you have on DVD, SM? – TBL
You need some ice for that burn, SM?
Yes Fiona..maybe a little too much Xtravagance yesterday?? LOL!!
There was also Christina Aguilera’s new name after she went through her ‘slutty stage’ – Xtina
LOL. I no longer get notifications of comments or new posts! What’s up with that Rusty?
Fiona – start up a new blog – I would read it!
LOL. I’ll just move back to Twitter and the comments sections of Newscorp papers.
Ah, Twitter…bogan online chatter. Glad to see you’ve lowered your standards (?), pretty soon all your communication will be an indecipherable concophany of numbers and letters…you will embrace X in all it’s misused forms, no doubt. What will the servants do then?
LOL. Did you mean “cacophony”? https://thingsboganslike.wordpress.com/2009/11/16/26-malapropisms/
Sounds like you’ve been X-communicated
Video games were for nerds and fags until the X-Box came along.
You forgot xylophone.
http://www.hedburgh.com/media/video/flash/letterman.11.23.01.htm
Xellent post…could we see an article on misspelt business names (insert anything with Krazy, Kustom, Foto, etc. here) the ultimate for the aspiring self-employed bogan.
Spot on Bogue. Don’t forget the use of the word ‘Lite’ to describe all food and drink products that may be low in fat, but full of sugar. Only this morning I saw the ad for the ‘Lite n’ Easy’ product, and it made me think that the person behinf the naming of that product is a marketing genius. Excellent use of a misspelled word, and EASY – no effort required on the bogans’ part! They actually have some woman on the ad who professes her love for the product because it means she “doesn’t have to think”. Fuck me, what is our world coming to when thinking about what food to put in to your mouth is all too hard.
And finally, a great example of a misspelt business name, is a new ice cream shop in Rye (yes, I saw it on my way to Portsea) called Vulcano. My question is, do they even know it is misspelt?
“Fuck me, what is our world coming to when thinking about what food to put in to your mouth is all too hard.”
🙂
AB, if you’re talking about the same Lite and Easy ad that I have seen recently, I believe it also starts with the woman stating “I needed to lose weight and my husband wouldn’t get me a chef, so I decided to use lite and easy”…
“MY HUSBAND WOULDN’T GET ME A CHEF”????? WTF? How hard is it to cook low fat meals yourself?
Ha! It’s probably unlikely they realise it’s misspelt…a surefire way to tell is to see if they have cuppacino flavoured icecream.
Or even mugacino. Where will it end? Bucketacino?
There is a coffee shop in the Dubai airport that sells very large cups (more like bowls) of coffee. Maybe TBL should do a post on Dubai. On the plane home from Frankfurt, I sat a few seats in front of a bunch of boguannnes (neue spellyngue for the NABs), and they wouldn’t STFU!! They were clad in the most garish Ed Hardy clothes ever (one of their shirts was covered in that fake tattoo crap), and even worse, I was flying full service Emirates!! Next time, I’m taking the boat
Dubai – perfect bogan territory. Nouveau X-treme space, reckless consumption, ‘exotic’ if you want it, a hint of criminality with all that Russian money, and a stopover in a bland international hotel you couldn’t normally afford.
…spit on the local culture and then complain of your un-Australian treatment when arrested!
It doesn’t get much better than that- ‘coz then you can whine about how slow the consular officials were to ACA!
A favourite activity of the middle eastern bogan on holidays, intoxicated by freedom of speech and forgets where they are. Complaints to ACA about slow consular officials are normally accompanied with a watered down version of the events that lead to their unjust treatment.
You’re too kind.
And Holden Commodores already badged as Chevys!
Surely they’d call it “X-presso” flavour?
“And finally, a great example of a misspelt business name, is a new ice cream shop in Rye (yes, I saw it on my way to Portsea) called Vulcano. My question is, do they even know it is misspelt?”
Possibly not, but I bet they attract an abnormally high number Trekkies 😉
“Vulcano” is a common Calabrian surname – it might be the owner’s name.
I tried their ice confection on the way down to the polo and the name is correct, vulcan as in vulcanised, it indded tasted rubbery
If you truly go to Portsea, you know never to drive through Rye
Like the bogue’s love for “Old Skool Kool”…………… complete Xcrement!
X-cellent entry TBL.
A word on the origin of X in popular bogan culture.
You surmised that Xmas was the beginning.
Well i remember long before Xmas got a gig, X’s would be substituted for kisses on birthday cards etc.
e,g. To TBL
Happy Birthday and Best Wishes
Love
west_melb_anitbogan
X X X X X X X X X X
X-mas has had an X since the 15th century, it comes from the ancient greek alphabet and has been used as an abbreviation since.
X’s have been used as a sign of affection and a substitute for kisses since Roman times.
Something to do with X being ten in Roamn numerals and sounding like the Latin term “to kiss”.
Must be true, found it on Wikipedia 🙂
I saw the x-mas abbreviation information on television which would never tell a lie or be wrong.. Apparently X= C in Greek?
X = <3…bogan algorithm
True, Vivisection. Just recently I came across it in 19th C. manuscripts. I didn’t realise it had been used prior to the 20thC. until I saw that.
Academics often use Xian as shorthand for Christian. Does that mean we are bogans too?
I feel a crisis of identity coming on…
Xquisite post there, TBL.
This is brilliant as per usual.
no mentioning of XXXX? I am suprised (or might have overlooked it 😦 ).
No Ed, that was a spelling error. They had meant to write “beer”, but being Queenslanders, only knew how to sign their name, and thus decided to do it four times.
I also thought that part of the appeal of the letter X was that is contained in the word SEX…
and if you only hear one sound in a complete sentance, X would stand out because you might have thought you heard the word SEX…
+1 to the Vin Diesel comment… I wonder why that guy hasn’t won an academy award…
I hope the bogan discovers the xx, that music belongs to the bogan masses.
Citing a band that Pitchfork Media love
+ but are yet to hit popular status (euphemistically known as “mainstream acceptance”)
= I have music cred and I wish to announce it to everyone
Get with the program, punter (and be sure and look out for more relatively obscure bandname references by TBL, they shouldn’t be too far away).
The ‘Vampire Weekend’ albums have reached the Sanity ‘What’s Hot’ bin. Given the number of fat bogan teens who diddle themselves to those ‘Twilight’ books, I say they’ll be on Video Hits before you know it. Are the ‘doof doof’ remixes far behind?
good call…
the femme bogue loves a lil Xtina (aka Christina Aguilera), esp in her ‘dirrrty’ phase….
then of course there is the bogan’s love of X-box, all and any Xtreme sports and who can forget aspirations of the femme bogue to get some botoX
The bogan will gladly pay x-tra money to see such x-tra large films as ‘XXX’ in the Xtreme screen at Hoyts, which is just the larger of their normal screens, but with a shiny xtreme logo on the front door. Village, not to be outdone, charge xtra for people to see films on their V Max screens. Same film. The screen just takes up more real estate.
That’s the only way to enjoy cinema, hey? Yeah, nah. Movies to the x-treme!
Oh FFS aren’t their X-travagant 200″ Plasma’s big enough for them, that when they go to the movies to see movies as deep and introspective as Avatar they need an even bigger screen???
X Rating also was very popular with the pre internet bogan. Watching X Rated movies was a sure fire way to see gratuitous sex, and fantasise of one day being as built as the males stars and having relations with a breast augmented bleach blonde.
Mind you, boutique popsters XTC had no chance of cracking the bogan market, despite Ansy Partridge and Colin Mouding being the “Working Class Man” themselves.
Only indirectly, via their musical offspring. Too old to care but every second indie band these days sounds like them. Or Eno-era Roxy Music.
Mis-spelling: I meant Andy Partridge
‘X-tra’ large options for drinks, chips, burgers etc? It’s made us the obese nation of winners that we are.
The X games are just an excuse for ADHD bogan adults to keep pursuing juvenile activities such as skateboarding and bmx ( oh yesss,another ‘x’ !).
Topcrumpet, I take offense at your Boganising of ADHD adults who enjoy skateboarding. I still love to carve up a bowl, and I am dealing with my self control issues ha ha.
I agree that adults who still ride BMX’s look like wallys.
My phobia is engaging in conversation with Motocross heads or Rev heads that seem to talk greek with constant references to KX 1000’s or XTR 500’s or WRX NX MX XR6 Whatever X.
The X-ception would be the XY Falcon (an absolute classic if it doesn’t have too much fruit on it) or an XP Falcon wagon, sky blue, white walled tyres, and a couple of Mals on the roof.
Don’t you mean Moto-X? I hope you were clad in your finest FoX apparel?
I dunno Toddo, it’s all dangerous territory.
Just like the nouveau bogan middle aged man with a baseball cap on backwards, wraparound Bolles, bucket beard covering the burgeoning double chin, Ed Hardy t shirt just that bit tooooo tight, 3/4 length cargo style shorts, and some type of white ‘casual’running shoe with ankle length white socks.
Best avoided.
Ha Ha Topcrumpet, that was pretty good.
I have been riding skaties for 25 odd years now, and can’t see the point in stopping, though my Chiro sees things differently.
It is a curious fascination with the letter ‘X’… being the 24th letter of the alphabet…
I would have though that the letter B would have been the more popular… given that it is 2nd letter (way too lazy to go thru the whole 26), given that it is also linked to such other Bogan words like BooBs, Beer, Burnouts, etc…
I don’t think The XX are in any danger of ending up on the playlists of bogan iPods. Whilst they may be initially be intrigued by the name, once they hear that it’s just a Lo-Fi love in they’ll be bitterly disappointed and go back to listening to Muse.
If they aren’t interested in lo fi stuff, then I dearly hope the prediction TBL made about them liking Bon Iver was a mistake.
Unfortunately, Bon Iver has already fallen into the hands of the Bogan. I recently heard it being blasted from a Frangipanni covered car whilst it’s occupants had a heated argument. I’m trying to be optimistic here…
I dearly hope it was because they were listening to triple j. I will cry when I hear the bogan spruiking the next Bon Iver album. I understand their like of acoustic music such as Mumford and Ben Harper etc. But I still feel Bon Iver is a bit too oblique and therefore not going to be co opted by the bogan. I fear I may be wrong, but I live in hope.
didn’t the american ‘strait edge’ kiddies do the whole X thing too? On their hands, so they couldn’t drink at clubs, or something? Wonder if that blended into emo which has become a mainstay of younger bogues.
The straight edge X’s on the hands started out with security at venues placing x’s on the back of underagers hands when they went to watch bands in the mid 80’s as a way of showing who could or could not be served alcohol. Bands such as Minor Threat picked up on this and it became part of the straight edge scene. And emo and straight edge aren’t blended in, emo started in the early 80’s with bands like Jawbreaker and Fugazi. And I would hardly say younger bogues are into emo and straight edge. They hate “farkin’ emo faggots” and as for straight edge, no drinking or drugs? A bogans idea of hell! How else would the bogue enjoy the latest opus’ from Dizzee Rascal and Calvin Harris without X-tacy?
I know how it started, I just couldn’t be bothered getting into that. The strait edge kids really do resemble emos, though, and judging by the way that younger emos style themselves goths, mashing the genres together into one great big mess along with aspects of punk, I really think that the strait edge asthetic got thrown in there as well. Of course they don’t want to actually live the lifestyle. obviously missing out on all that smoking drinking sex and drugs would be any bogan’s worst nightmare. But I doubt they understant the origins of the asthetic, much as they mangle the other asthetics mentioned. If you interact with these younger ‘alterna-kiddies’, I think you’ll feel the bogan coming off of them. The males may wear makeup and jewellery, but they still deride everyone around them as ‘fags’, are yell frightfully ignorant nonsense while throwing around beer bottles at the local train station. They also seem to blend the sk8r culture in there as well, with all its Xtremeness.
I think this mashing together of various ‘alternative’ subcultures amoung the young bogans, while also mimicing various celebrities who have jumped on the alterna-bandwagon, is very similar to the theft of international cultures the older bogans demonstrate.
off topic but related to an earlier post about cappuccino: back in the 80s, while working in a beachfront restaurant at Burleigh Heads on the Gold Coast, a female customer once asked me for a ‘cup of cino’
Ha! I’ve heard that one a few times too, usually at roadhouse restaurants whilst travelling. My favourite is Yves St Laurent, pronounced (in bogan) Yes Saint Laurence.
ok, so where does hesperion xxi, previously hesperion xx, fit within this discussion?
Wogans what plays viola da gamba – pffft! Though Jordi could be noice name for a little brother to Ayce.
I own an XT Falcon.
Did the inner bogan come out when I purchased such a vehicle.
Oh BTW what happened to the first 5 XR’s???
I think, acording to the sales literature, your inner mustang came out.
What happened to the first 5 XR’s? They were purchased by five 1960’s bogans (bodgies? Sharpies?)?
I owned an XT once, wish I still had it!
My Godfathers paddock basher XT ute (3.6 litre, 3 on the tree) is an awesome vehicle…I don’t think it’s seen oil in years, but you just can’t kill that all iron Ford straight six!
Favourite Falcon model is definitely the XA GT, however like Toddo, I’ve got a soft spot for XP’s. Love the coupes, expecially with the 170 c.i. Pursuit engine. (Bogometer needle goes up another notch) But wouldn’t mind one of the rare XP Squire wagons though…Mr Nelson Esquire in a Squire wagon…has a nice ring to it, I think!
My XT was a standard auto with the 3.6L (221ci?) but I now enjoy the finer things in life, Valiants!
I was lucky enough to occasionally get the XT GT to drive out to the Farm in my young student days – very fast down the Med-Engy straight heading to the Nott
XY’s for me…
I’ve got 3… 🙂
Trade up Loftie, no way Fiona is riding in a Ford. Perhaps an X5?
What the hell are you all talkng about? Motor things?
Far too many “X”s for my brain!
Xuck….Fux….Xhit….Xunt…has a ring to it 😛
Oh, there’s another example: CountryLink’s XPT, the trains used for long-distance services from Sydney to various locations.
Nothing about the Australian band ‘X’ though, they would be too scary for most.
…Not to mention Xubuntu Linux.
XXXX beer
So this x-plains why itunes creates new titles for songs such as “the new sxxt” and “too drunk to fxxk”, Marketing genius
Ten Pin Bowling.
Nothing beats an X. The more X’s you get the better you are.
[…] quests. Tired of being a judge on someone else’s show, he created his own show, and named it X-Factor. The British version features Cowell and the mediocre and plastic Dannii Minogue (breasts), while […]
just a small thing…the X in Xmas stands for Jesus’ name in Latin which is a X. Therefore this is not bogan as the bogan does not know Latin or where Latin is.
As far as we can tell, Jesus in Latin is Iesus. TBL
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xmas#Usage_of_.22X.22_for_.22Christ.22
A local ex-player at our local footy club just named his son Fletcher Maxx!