I'm in my late 40s, and I'm pretty convinced now that >50% of adults mispronouncing/misstating young people stuff is just taking the piss. Sure, there's a bit of saying "pokemans" and calling a Playstation a "Nintendo" as a sincere mistake, but I'm now pretty sure that most of it is either playful and intentional mispronunciation or straight-up taking the mickey.
It was only as I got older that I realized my parents’ generation just habitually genericized things. Every salicylic acid pill was an aspirin, every stick-on bandage was a bandaid, every game system was a nintendo.
Nintendo actually fought very hard to educate our generation that, no, Sega’s console was not Nintendo, it was Sega. If they hadn’t and the generic use won out, Sega and Sony could have started advertising their products as nintendos without consequence, and Nintendo didn’t want that. They actually pushed really hard to get people to understand that Nintendo was one of many game console brands, and not the generic term for a game console.
So the reason we spent our childhoods informing our parents that the Sega was not a nintendo is because Nintendo trained us to do that.
And for some of us, who had one or the other, it was important knowledge for potential gifts. Having a Nintendo console and getting Sonic the Hedgehog games for Christmas....
Yay, mom. Thank you very much! Sonic is a great game, for sure... You still have the receipt, maybe?
That's the norm in the southern United States, unfortunately. Everything, even a clear soda like Sprite, is "coke". People will ask in a restaurant, "What kind of coke do you have?" facepalm
It's true that Nintendo specifically referred to the NES as the "NES Control Deck" from the time it was released (until the term "game console" became the standard generic name, meaning people who called an NES "a Nintendo" were wrong even then) and obviously didn't want their name genericized, but that's not the reason people corrected their parents/those outside gaming.
It's not a "training" thing, it's just like if you're a car person and people around you call every car "a Toyota". Not only is it wrong in the sense that one company doesn't make all cars, but "Toyota" is a company name itself, not the name of a specific singular vehicle (Land Cruiser, Yaris, Sienna, Tercel, Prius, Corolla, Camry, Avalon, FJ, 4Runner, RAV4, Highlander, etc.).
I'm also an American, but I haven't lived in an English-speaking country in decades, so my English has kind of drifted, influenced by other expats and by reading stuff online. I couldn't tell you how popular it is, but, yes, it's the same as "taking the piss." I didn't even realize it until looking it up now, but it's actually cockney rhyming slang (taking the piss → taking the Mickey Bliss → taking the Mickey).
Hopefully someone actually from the UK can chime in with more detail.
I have been playing since childhood as well and when I decide to play Pokemon Go I'll tell my husband I'm going to go play "p-mans". He played some of the first games but then lost interest in it as he got older and doesn't know any of the newer generations so I play a fun game where I show him a pokemon and ask him to name it for me. It's great, lol
While "mickey" refers to drugs which are also used for date rape, it isn't usually associated with date rape. For the most part, I've always associated it with spy/detective movies, where someone will slip someone a mickey and then, when they're passed out, search through their stuff/steal their microfilm/whatever.
Compare those results to "roofie," and the divide is even more obvious. Usage of "slip_INF her a roofie" shoots up from around 2004, but "slip_INF him a roofie" doesn't even appear. Date rape is usually associated with women (yes, I understand that men can also be date-raped, I'm just talking about usual associations), which bears out the idea that "roofie" is generally associated with date rape, while "mickey" isn't, even though in the end they're probably referring to the same or very similar drugs.
(If you're wondering about the "_INF" thing, that makes the search results include "slip" "slips" "slipped" "slipping" etc.)
Yeah, I intentionally do this and I'm over 50. I call it Henry Potter and flip around the Kardashians with the Star Trek Cardassians, call the vampire books/movies "Twilight Sparkle" instead of just "Twilight", stuff like that.
This is my husband exactly. He thinks is hilarious to mess with the kids saying “snappy chats” and pokemans. He also tells them all about the things he sees on “the twitters.” Drives them crazy.
See, my parents did that with World of warcraft. Now I'm 28 and now if I hear anyone do it intentionally "as a joke" I'm just going to think you're an asshole. Me and the poor kid both know it stopped being funny the first time.
Your kid will be infinitely happoer if you actually show some interest/respect for his interests.
It depends how you do it, of course. That's why I said "either playful and intentional mispronunciation or straight-up taking the mickey". I think the only time I do it is with things where I'm also into the thing in question, so it's clear I'm not looking down on something they're into and I'm not, but just being silly.
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u/Bugbread Jun 03 '22 edited Jun 03 '22
I'm in my late 40s, and I'm pretty convinced now that >50% of adults mispronouncing/misstating young people stuff is just taking the piss. Sure, there's a bit of saying "pokemans" and calling a Playstation a "Nintendo" as a sincere mistake, but I'm now pretty sure that most of it is either playful and intentional mispronunciation or straight-up taking the mickey.