Welp, there goes the neighborhood

[Mrbloodworth]

Fixed and wiggas don't count. And I don't think its a racial slur either, but put in this context and the black avatars, I don't really know.

My friend calls me 'boo' a lot.

It's certainly not a slur, but it would be jarring to come from someone without the cultural background.

like google?

[SnakeCharmer]

Boo is slang for beauty. Or Beau. It's not used by anyone except the french and the carribeans.

wut?

I'm pretty sure the colored folk weren't calling me Beau or Beautiful.

It's Boo as in a ghost. 

As in white as a ghost.

[Lantyssa]

Boo

like google?

Like google.

[Mrbloodworth]

Boo is slang for beauty. Or Beau. It's not used by anyone except the french and the carribeans.

wut?

I'm pretty sure the colored folk weren't calling me Beau or Beautiful.

It's Boo as in a ghost. 

As in white as a ghost.

Thats not correct.

[HaemishM]

GO FOR THE EYES, BOO!

[SnakeCharmer]

Thats not correct.

OK.  According to you.

It's apparently easy to say it's not correct then not say why.

Look, when I asked what it meant, that's what I was told.  On a couple of occasions.  From different people.  Maybe it means something else whereever you are, but 'round here, that's pretty much it.

[Engels]

Yes, but by your own admittance, you live in a neck of the woods where one has 'whitey wednesdays' or some such apartheidesque conventions. Not exactly a representative sample of how the rest of the country may or may not operate.

[schild]

Yes, but by your own admittance, you live in a neck of the woods where one has 'whitey wednesdays' or some such apartheidesque conventions. Not exactly a representative sample of how the rest of the country may or may not operate.

It doesn't matter though. There's no boundaries on the net. Only takes one person to get pissed at google for either of these descriptions. Of course that one person will, mentally, be a petulant child. But it's still their fault. It doesn't matter if Snake is from The Deep South or the complaining party is from Alberta, CA.

[Venkman]

You guys are overthinking it. They meant this boo:



 

[SnakeCharmer]

Yes, but by your own admittance, you live in a neck of the woods where one has 'whitey wednesdays' or some such apartheidesque conventions. Not exactly a representative sample of how the rest of the country may or may not operate.

BTW, that wasn't 'our' (as in white) idea.  Kinda funny, honestly.

And....Apartheid.  Seriously?  Roffle.

Ooookay.

It doesn't matter though. There's no boundaries on the net. Only takes one person to get pissed at google for either of these descriptions. Of course that one person will, mentally, be a petulant child. But it's still their fault. It doesn't matter if Snake is from The Deep South or the complaining party is from Alberta, CA.

Doesn't matter to me.  This, to me, is also funny.

[angry.bob]

Boo is slang for beauty. Or Beau. It's not used by anyone except the french and the carribeans.

I'm highly suspect of a google engineer having used boo in that way. And the only other Boo is the freaky black kid from To Kill a Mockingbird.

It might not have been racist per se, but then racism always depends on the source, doesn't it?

Boo Radley was white. 'Boo around these parts is slang for Jigaboo within the "urban" community, which is most definately a racial slur. Think of the little pygmy from Looney Tunes that they pretend never existed now, except wearing a pair of ripped up clam diggers, a patched vest, and a dented top hat standing in front of a cobbled together shack with a yard full of chickens while picking his teeth with a catfish rib in between bites from a giant piece of watermelon. yeah...

[MahrinSkel]

Word to your mother.

(wtf does that even mean...)

Originally?  It was an insult, implying that you used to have sex with their mother back when she was a club slut.  Like most slang, it eventually meant nothing at all, and stopped being used.  Ditto for "boo", the meaning has changed a half a dozen times, and can be different in various parts of the country.  Generally, the regional ebonics slang definitions go national when a new rapper hits the big time, usually divorced from the context and often deliberately mis-used.  Half the time, it's a joke the rappers are having with their white fans as the butt of it.

--Dave

[tmp]

Originally?  It was an insult, implying that you used to have sex with their mother back when she was a club slut.  Like most slang, it eventually meant nothing at all, and stopped being used.

Ahh cool, thought there's maybe some tenous connection to the 'yo mama' things, but it made completely no sense given the context... thank you for explaining 

[lamaros]

Meaning of words different in different areas. Also, they change over time!!

Fuck me who could have ever imagined?

[tazelbain]

[Adam Tiler]

Yes, but by your own admittance, you live in a neck of the woods where one has 'whitey wednesdays' or some such apartheidesque conventions. Not exactly a representative sample of how the rest of the country may or may not operate.

*admission

[schild]

Boo is slang for beauty. Or Beau. It's not used by anyone except the french and the carribeans.

I'm highly suspect of a google engineer having used boo in that way. And the only other Boo is the freaky black kid from To Kill a Mockingbird.

It might not have been racist per se, but then racism always depends on the source, doesn't it?

Boo Radley was white. 'Boo around these parts is slang for Jigaboo within the "urban" community, which is most definately a racial slur. Think of the little pygmy from Looney Tunes that they pretend never existed now, except wearing a pair of ripped up clam diggers, a patched vest, and a dented top hat standing in front of a cobbled together shack with a yard full of chickens while picking his teeth with a catfish rib in between bites from a giant piece of watermelon. yeah...

Fuck, I had it backwards. And jigaboo was what I was trying to think of. Thanks.

[Roentgen]

Interesting.

Is anyone still using this thing?

[Hellinar]

Seems to be dead for now. Released too early, with too little to do.

Maybe some people are using it as a chat room for their website?

[Morfiend]

I messed around with it for like 15 minutes. I couldnt figure out how to walk. Also it ran like shit, and I have a good rig. Promptly uninstalled it.

[Lantyssa]

I messed around with it for like 15 minutes. I couldnt figure out how to walk. Also it ran like shit, and I have a good rig. Promptly uninstalled it.

I figured out that running it in SeaMonkey with IE Tab made it run pretty well.  Held my interest for five minutes though.

[Hawkbit]

The first day was pretty cool, even though I knew it wasn't a function I'd use.  On day 2, the 'most visited' pages were all pr0n rooms so I uninstalled.  : \

[Soln]

It's Google's BOB.   

[Roentgen]

I don't really see any use for this.  People keep comparing this to Second Life.  It is nothing in function at all like Second Life.

[Venkman]

Yep.

And it being a side project means that it'll only ever get a lot of Google attention if a lot of people stick with it. Like the rest of their line of half-finished ideas.

At best it's good for explaining to people what they could do with browser-based MMOs. Unfortunately, it requires that download/install, which is the don't-feel-like-bothering feature in between folks who have no problem buying a disc and installing/patching and those who don't want to be bothered doing anything more than hitting a URL.

[Venkman]

That didn't last very long 

Not worth adding to the closed list. Personally I'm not all that surprised. Google likes to dabble, but MMOs are not something so easily dabbled in.

[Soln]

It's Google's BOB.   

 

[Iniquity]

Since the thread's necro'ed anyways, I'd just say that 'boo' has a pretty universal meaning to anyone in their teens/early twenties; and it's 'beau', just as Lantyssa I think noted?

As Common rapped on the Like Water For Chocolate album:  "I never call you my bitch / or even my boo / because there's so much in a name / and so much more to you."

Good to see Lively gone.  It wasn't a google-level project; I know they put 'beta' on half of everything they do, but that's not an excuse for putting it out there way too early.  It dilutes the Google brand for no great benefit.  The common thread among all of Google's successful innovations has been a semi-radical rethink of an essential app (i.e. Chrome's design to optimize web apps and run tabs as separate processes, or gmail's organizing replies into conversation threads)