{"id":93601,"date":"2016-04-17T07:48:09","date_gmt":"2016-04-17T15:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=93601"},"modified":"2016-04-17T07:48:09","modified_gmt":"2016-04-17T15:48:09","slug":"is-that-even-a-thing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=93601","title":{"rendered":"Is That Even A Thing?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.unz.com\/isteve\/is-that-even-a-thing\/\">Comments to Steve Sailer<\/a>:<\/p>\n<p>* The phrase \u201cIs that even a thing?\u201d has a specific usage. I first encountered the phrase when listening to my then college-age daughter, and was quite struck by it. The intended meaning of \u201cthing\u201d in this phrase is something like<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAn activity that a substantial number of people do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For example, take \u201cwhale-watching\u201d. This does not mean \u201cI happened to see a whale.\u201d \u201cWhale-watching\u201d means that I bought stuff to do it with, I paid for tickets to do it, I rode with a number of other people on a specially-designed boat on a voyage the specific purpose of which was finding, getting close to and yes, watching whales.<\/p>\n<p>The phrase \u201cIs that even a thing?\u201d expresses something more, namely, incredulity or at least doubt, that something is an activity that a number of people do. If you asked \u201cIs whale-watching even a thing?\u201d you are expressing at least doubt that people really engage in whale-watching as an organized activity. (Well, I\u2019ve done this myself, and I can assure you that whale-watching is, indeed, a thing.)<\/p>\n<p>However, when a native speaker (I\u2019d say a millennial) uses this phrase, they are sometimes doing more than simply expressing doubt that the named activity is actually recognized as an activity, and is done by a substantial number of people.<\/p>\n<p>They are trying to control what is a thing, in the sense of the last sentence of your post. They are seeking to have deep power over the thoughts and activities of their social group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Comments to Steve Sailer: * The phrase \u201cIs that even a thing?\u201d has a specific usage. I first encountered the phrase when listening to my then college-age daughter, and was quite struck by it. The intended meaning of \u201cthing\u201d in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=93601\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21791],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-93601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=93601"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93602,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93601\/revisions\/93602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=93601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=93601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=93601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}