Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Vergackeiern (Pretending to Make Sense of Nonsense)

Okay, this was supposed to be a bilingual blog, so the first word we learn is "Vergackeiern." You won't find it in the dictionary, but only on Google. It's a colloquial expression, supposedly from the Ruhr area (Wanne-Eickel, Wattenscheid, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Schalke 04, Wuppertal-Elberfeld and stuff). According to googlefight, I spell it incorrectly, but, then again, I am not from the Ruhr area, but grew up in the boondocks (Dear Brits: these are the sticks, I will dedicate another post to the boondocks vs. the sticks): In a town akin to El Centro, a spa akin to Cheltenham and another one akin to, well, Spa. Anyways, I digress. Vergackeiern means in a way to pull someone's leg. But not really: It means to deceive someone in a friendly way, but not necessarily with friendly intentions. On the web, you find lots of people who vergackeier their unsuspecting audience and potential clients. My first example is a German site, I'm afraid. No need to worry, though, I am sure you can translate the entire site.

Alright, this fellow sells website design and advertises his designing skills using among others this website as a reference page for his work. Stop searching for the hidden links in the site, there are none! This is it. You saw the entire site! And here is, how he advertises it: "Please notice that the entire site requires only 13KB memory capacity. You can save up to one hundred of these sites on a single discette." Cool, with new technologies, you might carry all websites of your 300,000 businesses on a single Flash memory card in your wallet!!!! What more do want?

Congratulations, you now learnt the meaning of vergackeieren.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Your example does not really explain all details :-)

You've forgotten to mention that your explanation itself is a good example for "vergackeiern" - as it is clearly visible that the website has been removed and does no longer show up - instead a small removal note pops up which accounts for less than 1kB...

6:26 AM PST  

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