Urge to Glurge February 5, 2007
Posted by The Probabilist in : [Articles], Communication, Entertainment, Beliefs, Vision , trackback
The term glurge was coined in 1998 by contributor Pat Chapin at Snopes.com and has divided people’s opinions towards both sides of the love/hate spectrum. Here are a couple of definitions:
Glurge: n. & v.
- The sending of inspirational (often supposedly ‘true’) tales that conceal much darker meanings than the uplifting moral lessons they purport to offer, and that undermine their messages by fabricating and distorting historical fact in the guise of offering a ‘true story’.
- A neologism describing a certain kind of melodramatic, saccharine story. The defining characteristic of glurge is that, while its purpose is to make the reader happy (and possibly teach a moral lesson), the feel-good aspect is so overdone that some readers are likely to be nauseated rather than inspired. It often has a religious theme and is most commonly circulated via e-mail in the form of a chain letter.
Here are a few sources if you’re interested in the genre:
http://www.snopes.com/glurge/
http://glurge.com/
http://www.wolaver.org/Humor/glurge.htm
And these links lead to anti-glurge sites and opinions:
http://www.antwon.com/other/glurge-scam1.html
http://www.gregvail.com/sys-tmpl/glurgehoax/
Glurge may be found in e-mails or SMS messages sometimes telling you that bad things will happen to you if you don’t forward the story to a given amount of your contacts. Then again, snopes has done a good job in referencing the most common glurge stories and it goes to show that some tales do stand at a sufficient level of veracity. The question is then how sugar-coated the writing ought to be to make the best impact.
While I do believe in tales serving a good purpose as well, I got saturated by glurge after a day and haven’t thought much of it until I decided to write this entry. I would therefore classify my thoughts on the matter as quite indifferent. To each his own. But attempting to evoke guilt for not passing it forward is just annoying. So what are your opinions about the issue? Does glurge inspire you and keep you hungry or is it a disgusting phenomenon that is rooted in deluded and wishful thinking? How about 9/11 glurge?
(No Ratings Yet)
Comments»
Hi,
I learnt something new today. Thank you
Sham
I guess I fall into the category of folks who think glurge is just fluff and filler. I find the writing to be preachy and condescending and a lot of the plot devices are cliche, such as killing off the main character to prove the moral. Besides, I do not join e-mail lists or message boards for anonymous authors to moralize at me. C’mon, why can’t I have a crappy day once in a while or why must I smile all the time or whatnot. Somebody on a message board I frequent pointed out that these stories, although they seem harmless, encourage people not to feel their genuine feelings and they give the impression that people have some moral duty to be happy no matter what. Personally, I am positive most of the time, but I also think negative emotions are healthy to have sometimes. These stories are just not written with the realist or cynic or agnostic in mind, as many of them, and let’s be brutally honest at the risk of offence, mention the Christian god. Never saw any pagan or Muslim or Subgenius glurge before. Subgenius glurge? Hmmm, I wonder what that would look like. Hahahaha! But I’ve had many an argument with people over glurge and those who like it just keep on saying the same thing. “There’s always the delete key.” Yes there is, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to shut up. Hahahaha!