Inventing Lingo is not easy – and some would suggest by its very nature you can’t. Much like viral videos, if you are trying to make one, it already is not viral. Same can be said with Lingo. Phrases and terms just happen because someone says it purely because it is what they say. Others adopt it and now its accepted into the slang of our culture.
I myself am credited with the term “ZomDram” referring to Zombie Drama movies and the phrase “Civil War of DVD Formats” in reference to the now finished inaccurately named “format war” of BluRay and HD-DVDs. But I can’t make those valid terms just because I want them too.
One pop culture term that has survived for decades has been “Jump the Shark”. I imagine considering its origins, many people coin the phrase knowing what it means but not where it came from. For those still in the dark, Jump the Shark is the term used to define the moment that a tv show or series did something that caused its inevitable failure. It comes from the classic TV Show Happy Days in which its cooler than cool star “The Fonz” performs a stunt water ski jumping over a shark. After that the show was on its way out. has a library of speculation on when a series Jumped the Shark.
This brings me to an article I read over at /Film
“Nuke the fridge is a colloquialism used to refer to the moment in a film series that is so incredible that it lessens the excitement of subsequent scenes that rely on more understated action or suspense, and it becomes apparent that a certain installment is not as good as a previous installments, due to ridiculous or low quality storylines, events or characters.
Now the reference of “Nuke the Fridge” might make direct spoiler references into a very early scene in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, so I wont get into the specifics.
My concern over the reference of this as a pop culture phrase is that it seems like they are attempting to TELL you that this is the new term as opposesd to informing you on an existing reference. The definition Urban Dictionary implies that this term is already widely used to reference those circumstances and the movie it calls its inspiration has barely even been out two weeks. I imagine it was some time after the Happy Days episode before people really started to use Jump the Shark as an understood concept. Two weeks after that episode, people were likely still saying it was a bad episode. Its effects and impact were not felt for years, let alone applying it to other circumstances.
Its like those cd’s that have the sticker on it “Contains the Hits…” and names songs the artist has yet to release yet.
I still think the definition makes it a little too close to the same thing Jump the Shark says, and I doubt that someone can make it replace the terminology after decades of use.
Not to say that the traditional has to triumph, but rather forcing pop culture disqualifies it as pop culture.
Will you adopt “Nuke the Fridge”?
Do you even use the phrase “Jump the Shark”?
