Interweb
From Free net encyclopedia
"Interweb" (sometimes deliberately misspelled "intarweb" and pronounced with strong secondary stress on the second syllable) is a slang term referring to the Internet, sometimes more specifically referring to the World Wide Web. The term is often used as a joke or sarcastically, to indicate inexperience using the Internet; for example, "You broke teh Interweb". The joke is that the correct term is "internet" or "web". "Interweb" thus implies ignorance of the most basic terminology.
The term interweb originated as the hacker culture responded to the ever-increasing influx of inexperienced users to the Internet's forums and chat rooms. Whereas the Internet had previously been the exclusive domain of the tech-savvy, it was now attracting millions of newcomers (newbies) who were now participating in it (often with poor netiquette). Referring to the Internet as the interweb mocks the inexperience and ignorance of these newcomers, whose lack of understanding of the workings of the 'net would often amuse or annoy the more experienced.
The first recorded use in the derogatory sense was in the Camp Chaos Flash video Metallicops (June 7, 2000. "Interweb Baaaad") an episode in the Napster Bad series mocking Metallica and their campaign against illegal file sharing. Earlier uses in science fiction of the term include the Babylon 5 episodes "Eyes" (1994) and "Passing Through Gethsemane" (1995).
The comedy group Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie also used the phrase in their sketch "Keep your parents off the internet". The anti-hero of the story is trying to persuade his computer-illiterate father not to go online, to which the latter responds: "Your old man is going to be on the interweb!" During her tenure at Saturday Night Live the comedian Ana Gasteyer played in a sketch depicting an infomercial spokeswoman who sells her dolls on TV as opposed to the "interweb".
Fellow Canadian comic actor and writer, Brent Butt, promotes his CTV television sitcom, Corner Gas, at the conclusion of Season 1 (2004) episodes by stating, "We're on the Interweb at cornergas.com".
In the BBC program, Top Gear, two of the presenters use this word frequently when mentioning their website. Similarly, the pair further the sentiment by referring to the iPod as "ipp-odd".
The word even made it into a legitimate commercial for American communications company Verizon's DSL service, in which an elderly man asked his grandson, "Are we on the interweb?" while watching a video clip on a laptop computer.
Stephen Colbert routinely refers to the interweb on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report; the term is also used in The Venture Brothers series, in which Colbert is a voice actor.
Episode 2x08 of "House M.D." had Hugh Laurie sarcastically using the phrase.