Luser
From Encyclopedia Dramatica
- Not to be confused with a LUEser ...
In Netspeak, a luser (or looser) is a painfully annoying, stupid, or irritating computer user. The word luser is often synonymous with lamer. On some Citadel BBSes, the word luser has taken on a broader meaning and refers to any normal user, whereas depending on the type of Citadel software, a loser or a banned user is referred to as a twit and the software may even have special twit harrassment tools built in.
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History
This word was coined around 1975 at MIT. Under ITS, when you first walked up to a terminal at MIT and typed Control-Z to get the computer's attention, it printed out some status information, including how many people were already using the computer; it might print "14 users", for example. Someone thought it would be a great joke to patch the system to print "14 losers" instead. There ensued a great controversy, as some of the users didn't particularly want to be called losers to their faces every time they used the computer. For a while several hackers struggled covertly, each changing the message behind the back of the others; any time you logged into the computer it was even money whether it would say "users" or "losers" (this is considered to be the first edit war in history). Finally, someone tried the compromise "lusers", and it stuck. Later one of the ITS machines supported "luser" as a request-for-help command. ITS ceased to be used mid-1990, except as a museum piece; the usage lives on, however, and the term "luser" is often seen in program comments and on Usenet.
Difference Between An Older Loser And A Younger Loser
A younger loser on a forum will usually get raged if someone questions any of his opinions, backtalking with topics such as saying that the questioner(s) is(are) one to all of the following items: fat, ugly, pedophile, hentai fapper, in the closet, sad and all other koo words one can learn of My Sweet Sixteen.
An older loser is substancially different, he will use all of the names previously mentioned plus one or two phrases focusing on the probability of the questioner being "a (read 'ei') guy who still lives with his parents". The sense of achievement the loser gets from this word exchange hype will most likely keep him happy all day, whether he's putting a costumers groseries in a plastic bag or flipping a homonymous piece of beef before joining it with some bacon and serving it on a bun with a cheerful "Thank you for your business, sir!"
Both are easily identifiable by their constant use of netspeak and incessant requests like "Seed Plz".
Other uses
- A Luser Attitude Readjustment Tool (LART) or cluebat or clue stick or clue by four is "something large, heavy and painful, used to respond appropriately to particularly annoying lusers".
- /luser is also a common IRC command to get the number of users connected to a server or network.
- Losers can exist OL or IRL and are equally annoying in both instances.
- tired of being a luser? Try deluser.
Loser Archives
Loser Findings go here Loser findings
