Jargon Watch: Infovegans versus Cookie Monsters

Two coinages from my Twitter feed this morning:

Infovegan: One who refuses cookies* (@cjoh via @carlmalamud -- see infovegan.org for more)

Cookie Monster: One who accepts cookies (JMike2)

*Update: More formally, "Someone who makes a deliberate decision to remove a vast amount of news and information sources from one's diet, sticking to a well constrained allowable set of consumption inputs for their own health's sake."

(Image: Cookie Monster, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from nickstone333's photostream)

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RedMonkey

C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me.
sweetcraspy

As someone who is not vegan, I’ll say that vegan cookies exist and are quite delicious. They are not the same as cookies with egg and butter in them, but they make up for that with a denseness and complexity of flavor that is hard to beat.

I agree that the metaphor is pretty thinly stretched.
chgoliz

Refusing site cookies is not the same thing as refusing to learn about world events via online news sources. And of course vegans eat cookies.

I’ll second GreenJello’s recommendation of “filter” instead. That term can be used with much greater nuance, and a lot less silliness about ‘but what does it mean?’.
hassenpfeffer

I don’t care much about cookies one way or the other, but cutting newsfeeds out of my daily input several months ago has led to a considerable improvement in my depression. Yes, I know about Syria, Libya, Egypt, etc., but if someone mentions Anthony Casey (or Casey Anthony?) I give them a blank stare. We’ve gone from “trying to drink from a[n information] firehose” to “trying to drink from a broken water main.”

Come to think of it, BB is my main source of news, for better or for worse.
- max hodges
  
  >Anthony Casey (or Casey Anthony?) I give them a blank stare.
  
  You can’t fool us; you generated that name all on your own. haha
  - hassenpfeffer
    
    Max, I know a couple of “Caseys” in real life as well as a couple of “Anthonys.” For me it’s almost, but not quite, as bad as the three “Matt Matthews”es in my HS class.
max hodges

maybe Info-Anorexic is better? Read Nassim Taleb, “Newspapers I stopped reading in the ’80s. You know how I know a subject is worth it? If you hear about it in a social setting. That’s the best filter.”
irksome

Fuck offending Vegans; why does no one here mention the tragedy that is Cookie Monster’s addiction?
arbitraryaardvark

green jello isn’t vegan.
knoxblox

Didn’t really catch the reference until today, but it’s become such an ingrained part of my online experience to refuse cookies when at all possible, I didn’t even notice.
Anonymous

I hereby summon the Cookie Monster Slayer! ARISE, SLAYER! SLAYER, ARISE!
Ministry

Um. Rejecting cookies is something an infovegan might do, but there’s a lot more to the definition than that, isn’t there?
enkiv2

For instance, refusing to read articles with any meat to them…

(Info-vegan is a terrible term, because it’s so easily abused by extended metaphors)
GreenJello

Info-vegan is a terrible term, because it’s so easily abused by extended metaphors

Filter is a much better term, and really gets to the heart of it, people filter, always, some more than others, each in their own ways.

This seems like a hipster meme in the making, a tale told by a fool, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
TEKNA2007

From infovegan.com:

Public notices and inquiries should be moved from the newspapers and the bowels of the web online to where we are: networks like Facebook and Twitter.

RSS isn’t good enough? Is it really necessary to keep Facebook apprised of every government agency one is interested in following?

FFFTFY

*waving hi from the bowels of the web *
Anonymous

wow…I think I just might have this “infovegan” thing…is there a treatment that won’t involve fox news in some way?
shadowfirebird

I’m an info-bullemic. I accept all cookies and then dump them when the browser closes.
Beldar

To me the reasonable thing to do is to keep the cookies that allow instant logins and do an immediate dump of all others, not waiting to close the browser, too much tracking. Check Cookie Culler to get the idea.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/cookieculler/
There must be something for Chrome and Opera.
Anonymous

Info-Atkins seems like a better term. Vegans can eat cookies, just not good ones.