6/10/2023 0 Comments Netflix and chill meme"All of the seduction happens on the public streets," Sherman said. And, according to Sherman, during and before the Restoration era, most people did not have access to any private space at all. In fact, he said that while Shakespeare and Restoration comedy abounded in sexual innuendo, almost none of it was in private. There's also another element at play in the "would you like to come up and see my etchings?" phenomenon: It requires that the asker have a removed space for their suitor to visit. "And in-jokes of all kinds abounded people would watch each other for their reactions to innuendo." Indeed, it's not a stretch to say the uproarious appreciation of innuendo in Shakespeare's time is today's retweet. "Remember that was evenly lit, and in a horseshoe shape everyone could see everyone," Sherman said. Which makes some sense, when you think about it: Just as Twitter is one of the great social media platforms of our time, allowing phrases like "Netflix and chill" to take root and thrive, so too was the theater a social medium during the Elizabethan era, where audience members regularly congregated to meet friends, show off their outfits, gossip and flirt. Shakespeare in particular "pack his plays" with sexual innuendos, much to the delight of his audience, who reveled in his bawdier jokes.Įventually, Sherman said, innuendo made the leap from the stage to the streets, becoming part of contemporary Elizabethan conversation. In a correspondence between a female character and a male suitor, the woman invites the man to view some etchings. "I have a new collection of etchings that I want to show you," she wrote.Ī brief history of innuendo: The need to rely on innuendo and coded language to make our intentions known stems further back than "want to come up and see my etchings?" It at least goes as far back as the Shakespearean era, according to Stuart Sherman, a scholar of Shakespeare and Restoration theater and professor of English at Fordham University.Īccording to Sherman, much of the innuendos and double entendres we use today have roots in theater. One of the earliest known uses of "come up and see my etchings" that Mic found is from Horatio Alger Jr.'s 1890 book The Erie Train Boy, which is partially available on Google Books. Beginning in the 1860s, there was a great " etching revival," which appears to have sparked the birth of the "want to come up and see my etchings?" invitation. It has been a popular form of art since the 16th century. It's also been referenced in numerous articles, such as this New York magazine piece whose headline pays homage to the phrase.įor the uninitiated, etching is a form of art in which a person covers a piece of metal with a top layer of wax and "etches" away at the wax to reveal a picture in the metal underneath. Let us know your favourite at on Twitter.While rarely used today, the phrase "Want to come up and see my etchings?" has been the subject of linguistic inquiry for years. Keep watching as we look back on the greatest memes of 2015. The best part is that, years from now, children will have these memes to let them know the story of their conception. Just what you need while you binge-watch with your bae. Later, Netflix brought things to the next stage at the 2015 World Maker Faire, unveiling a special button that could dim the lights and silence your smartphone as you stick on Netflix. In September, this champ of Netflix and Chill posted this photo to Reddit titled ‘My new Tinder pic’. With the world chiming in, the code is lost, but the joke is still going strong. Pretty soon after that, it was getting international media coverage. Though Know Your Meme dates online usage of Netflix and Chill as a euphemism back to late 2014, it was this year that it became so popular that even your granny (probably) knows what it means.īy the time summer rolled around, the brand itself cottoned on to the virality of the term and tweeted its own take. On both sides of the equation, this seemingly innocuous act has become code for hooking up thanks, in no small part, to associated images providing the necessary wink-wink, nudge-nudge. ‘Binge-watch’ may have been word of the year, but 2015 will go down in internet history as the year another streaming-related phrase slipped into our vocabulary.Įither you’re the type making a move ‘20 minutes into Netflix and chill’ or you’re the one caught off guard.
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