self-own
English edit
Etymology edit
self- + own, in verb sense own (“to defeat or embarrass; to overwhelm”), from Internet and gaming subculture.
Noun edit
- (Internet slang) A situation in which someone unintentionally embarrasses or undermines themselves.
- 2017 April 2, Amanda Hess, “Identity Theft [online title: None of Us Are Safe From Getting ‘Owned’]”, in New York Times Magazine[1], page 11:
- All of this has set the stage for ownage’s latest twist: the rise of the self-own. If an own exposes another person’s ignorance, a self-own reveals your own obliviousness. During the campaign, Bobby Jindal tried to insult President Trump on Twitter but ended up suggesting that only fools would donate to Jindal’s campaign: “We have met. You wrote a check. A fool & his money are soon parted. A fool & his dad’s money are parted sooner.” Jindal owned himself.
- 2018 February 28, “Air con”, in Oklahoma Gazette, page 11:
- "Unfortunately, ... we've had some incidents on travel dating back to when I first started serving in the March-April timeframe," [Scott] Pruitt told the Union Leader, which is hilarious because up to that point Pruitt never willingly spoke with a union leader. "We live in a very toxic environment politically, particularly around issues of the environment."
Besides that final quote being the grand champion of self-owns, publication of the interview led to more information about Pruitt's first-class habit.
- 2022, Violet Austerlitz, letter to the editor, Little Village, April 2022, page 15-16:
- Although—I will admit, I'm really enjoying what a self-own some of your logic is. You're like, "oh no we can't let trans girls compete against cis girls because we believe that trans girls are actually boys and everybody knows boys are athletically and intellectually superior to girls in every way and so we must protect our dumb weak daughters from being embarrassed."
- For more quotations using this term, see Citations:self-own.