"thinky thoughts"

[pauraque_bk]

^ This phrase! Where does it come from? I only ever see it from fandom people so I assumed it came from a show/movie/book, but googling only produces thousands upon thousands of fandom or fandom-adjacent people using it on their blogs.

Comments

[amanuensis1.livejournal.com]

I have no answers, only opinions! Maybe it's one of those hivemind-y internet phrases that started like cute misspellings started?

[pauraque]

Maybe! I was surprised not to get an immediate answer, since I was sure it came from somewhere and thought I was just ignorant.

[atdelphi.livejournal.com]

It sounds like it would be a Whedonism, but doesn't seem to be. I did a small year-by-year Google search, and I'm leaning towards the hivemind explanation.

[pauraque]

I thought that too, since I never watch his shows and everything I don't know about seems to come from them. Maybe he'll use it soon. :P

[rexluscus.livejournal.com]

Someone on a meme I read has it in for this phrase, because it suggests that there's something embarrassing or presumptuous about people (though mostly women) having sophisticated thoughts and ideas and it's necessary to give them a cutesy name so they're less threatening. I kinda see their point...what do you think?

[pauraque]

Yeah, I see what they mean. I wonder if it might feel (or have felt) particularly embarrassing to have sophisticated thoughts about, say, Harry Potter, which is something that might well get you laughed at IRL. I don't know if it originated in HP, but if it didn't, maybe it became popular there partly for that reason.

However, I do see it from a pretty wide range of people now, about all kinds of topics. So I would guess that if it originated that way, some of that meaning of it may have been bleached out by constant usage, turning it into just "a thing people say when introducing their thoughts". I would ask people who actually use it before I assumed that the origin (or a possible origin) defines it in the present.

To me this seems related to the fact that a lot of posts on personal blogs start with pragmatic markers ("So...") and pre-sequences that in face-to-face conversations signal you're about to say something long, and that sometimes includes apologies and attempts to downplay the importance of it ("Sorry, I just have to vent about this...") More formal blogs treat the discourse like a published work, and just get right to the point without all the pragmatic trappings of a spoken conversation where holding the floor for too long could be considered rude and needs to be softened. When you get to the end of a book, the author doesn't write "Sorry, this got long!"

[rexluscus.livejournal.com]

When you get to the end of a book, the author doesn't write "Sorry, this got long!"

This made me laugh so hard. Exactly! I think you're right - the "thinky thoughts" thing probably has more to do with agreed-upon demands on attention than embarrassment about deep thoughts - or if there *is* embarrassment, then it's contextually governed. Blogging/LJ-ing has a lot of unspoken rules of decorum. It also depends on the persona you've fashioned for yourself. Some people might feel weird getting all "thinky" on their LJ but wouldn't think twice about it on their Wordpress blog.

[saddle_tramp]

I first saw it in the early days of HP fandom. :-) I dunno if it appeared there or not, but it's been in use at least that long.

[pauraque]

Yeah, me too. I never saw it before that.