YOLO= "You only live once." I saw this several years ago on a Facebook wall. The subject was the most daring things people had done and one guy said he and his girlfriend had climbed some mountain last summer and someone else said they thought that was crazy and the mountain climber replied "YOLO".
I wasn't familiar with that particular acronym, but it didn't take long to find out what it meant: You Only Live Once - Mainly used to defend doing something ranging from mild to extreme stupidity (That's from the website Urban Dictionary. I'm not linking to it because 90% of the definitions on the site contain some...or a lot...of profanity. I'm thinkin' it's more than fair that I cite the source even if I don't insert a hyperlink)
I don't think climbing a mountain is stupid; I wouldn't do it, but I can think of a lot more stupid things there are to do. The way YOLO is being used most of the time is stupid, though.
Since that time I've seen it hundreds of times on the 'net, on Twitter feeds and set as a Facebook status. It's becoming overused, much in the way Hotel California was played way too much on the radio. That song was great the first dozen times I heard it, but when it was played a dozen times a day....
It was like that with YOLO for a long while, then - thankfully - it fell into disuse. It wouldn't go away completely - there were the isolated incidents that would call attention to it again, such as when Zac Efron got a YOLO hand tattoo. It's making a comeback, though, and a search of the 'net will show that I'm not alone in thinking it's being used far too often and in the wrong context.
I was reminded of it again the other day when some doofus posted in a fan group something like "Me 'n a bud drank a fifth of vodka, polished off a case of malt liquor and smoked a whole oz. of some crazy kine. YOLO." Yeah, I thought. You only live once, but you'll also probably only live a short time.
I suppose you only live once, but I prefer to go by the haiku written by James Bond in Ian Fleming's novel You Only Live Twice:
You only live twice:
Once when you are born
And once when you look death in the face
I'm certainly not a spy nor a combat veteran, but I have looked death in the face, both literally and figuratively. That's for another blog post, though.
The following is from the 1967 James Bond thriller You Only Live Twice opening, sung by Nancy Sinatra. (The movie bears little resemblance to the novel, by-the-way) I love the opening bars of the tune.
I wasn't familiar with that particular acronym, but it didn't take long to find out what it meant: You Only Live Once - Mainly used to defend doing something ranging from mild to extreme stupidity (That's from the website Urban Dictionary. I'm not linking to it because 90% of the definitions on the site contain some...or a lot...of profanity. I'm thinkin' it's more than fair that I cite the source even if I don't insert a hyperlink)
I don't think climbing a mountain is stupid; I wouldn't do it, but I can think of a lot more stupid things there are to do. The way YOLO is being used most of the time is stupid, though.
Since that time I've seen it hundreds of times on the 'net, on Twitter feeds and set as a Facebook status. It's becoming overused, much in the way Hotel California was played way too much on the radio. That song was great the first dozen times I heard it, but when it was played a dozen times a day....
It was like that with YOLO for a long while, then - thankfully - it fell into disuse. It wouldn't go away completely - there were the isolated incidents that would call attention to it again, such as when Zac Efron got a YOLO hand tattoo. It's making a comeback, though, and a search of the 'net will show that I'm not alone in thinking it's being used far too often and in the wrong context.
I was reminded of it again the other day when some doofus posted in a fan group something like "Me 'n a bud drank a fifth of vodka, polished off a case of malt liquor and smoked a whole oz. of some crazy kine. YOLO." Yeah, I thought. You only live once, but you'll also probably only live a short time.
I suppose you only live once, but I prefer to go by the haiku written by James Bond in Ian Fleming's novel You Only Live Twice:
You only live twice:
Once when you are born
And once when you look death in the face
I'm certainly not a spy nor a combat veteran, but I have looked death in the face, both literally and figuratively. That's for another blog post, though.
The following is from the 1967 James Bond thriller You Only Live Twice opening, sung by Nancy Sinatra. (The movie bears little resemblance to the novel, by-the-way) I love the opening bars of the tune.
4 comments:
I just learned something reading your blog. Guess I'm old and stupid but I didn't know what YOLO meant. Now I do! Thanks, Mike.
Don't feel bad, sharintexas. I didn't either. Thanks for the education, Mike!
Well, I kinda banged that post out really quickly and didn't define the acronym, sorry. I've edited the post and it looks a lot better now, not that it ever looked really good.
It was just that I saw the darn thing about six different times the other day and the people were using it as if it were some profound - and original- saying of their own.
I just saw a post on my Facebook page that was attributed to Mae West that said "You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough." I'm not going to vouch for the validity of the quote, but it is pretty accurate....in my opinion.
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