Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

How is using online generators cheating, when the option is plainly available between both parties? Unless it is listed specifically in the rules that online generators or otherwise assistance (such as a paper dictionary), isn't it merely an implied social rule -- and therefore NOT a genuine rule? When the option is plainly available to both competitors and isn't noted in the rules specifically, how can't it be considered cheating except only by suggestion or as a hold-over/honor-code from another similar game that forbids it?

I most often found myself "journey proud" the night before a new school year or college semester began, the night I need to get good rest to be bright and awake to take in all the new surroundings, but the anticipation of the next day obstructed calming down enough to taper off to sleep.

I often say SERIOUSLY?! to myself or whatever malfunctioning device I am frustrated by, in the same context of the really sentiment. I enjoyed the SNL segment but had heard it used years upon years prior so I know that was not the origin of the usage -- it's a bit of a sarcastic bit of snark spat by many a teenager in my high school days ('92-'96) in north Texas. I think the use the phrase by Tina/Seth/Amy made it more of a pop-culture confirmation that the phrase is alive and had thus, at that point, been legitimized by use on national media.

I am encountering a similar problem with attempting to locate the origin of the phrase (which varies to minor degrees), "I am 12, and what is this?" that I had seen used on 4chan long before the commonly accepted origin that most meme sites describe. As part of a 4chan raid on YouTube, users began registering random accounts and uploading pornographic film clips but giving them titles like "Jonas Brothers" and "Miley Cyrus" and setting them to private so they wouldn't be seen yet, until one specific attack day when all of the videos would simultaneously be set to public. The BBC made a video article about the issue, the reporter covering noting that one of the pornographic videos she found, as evidence that children were viewing the material, a comment stated, "I am 12, and what is this?" The phrase had already been in use with some frequency on 4chan for no fewer than 3 months prior to the raid and was already an established meme by then. The fact that the BBC thought it was an actual comment is what made the article so funny, and what made the article so widely distributed -- however, most meme-origin sites cites the BBC article as the actual origin of the phrase, that its use specifically mocks or refers to the BBC article, which is utterly untrue. There were several 255+comment threads on 4chan around the time the article came out about how the BBC got trolled into thinking the "I am 12 and what is this" was an actual 12 year old wondering what the material was, expressing the event as a major victory for 4chan's raid efforts.