Slacker

A slacker is a person who habitually avoids work or lacks work ethic.

Origin

According to different sources, the term slacker dates back to about 1790 or 1898.^[1] It gained some recognition during the British Gezira Scheme in the early to mid 20th century, when Sudanese labourers protested their relative powerlessness by working lethargically, a form of protest known as "slacking".^[2][3]

World wars

In the United States during World War I, the word "slacker" was commonly used to describe someone who was not participating in the war effort, especially someone who avoided military service, an equivalent of the later term draft dodger. Attempts to track down such evaders were called slacker raids.^[4] During World War I, U.S. Senator Miles Poindexter discussed whether inquiries "to separate the cowards and the slackers from those who had not violated the draft" had been managed properly. A San Francisco Chronicle headline on September 7, 1918, read: "Slacker is Doused in Barrel of Paint".^[5][6] The term was also used during the World War II period in the United States. In 1940, Time quoted the U.S. Army on managing the military draft efficiently: "War is not going to wait while every slacker resorts to endless appeals."^[7]

Evolution

The shift in the use of "slacker" from its draft-related meaning to a more general sense of the avoidance of work is unclear. In April 1948, The New Republic referred to "resentment against taxes levied to aid slackers".^[8]

Late 20th century

The term achieved renewed popularity following its use in the 1985 film Back to the Future in which James Tolkan's character Mr. Strickland says "You've got a real attitude problem, McFly. You're a slacker! You remind me of your father when he went here. He was a slacker, too."^[9] It gained subsequent exposure from the 1989 Superchunk single "Slack Motherfucker", and in the 1991 film Slacker.^[10] Slacker became widely used in the 1990s to refer to a subset of apathetic youth who were cynical and uninterested in political or social causes.

The term has connotations of "apathy and aimlessness".^[11] It is also used to refer to an educated person who avoids work, possibly as an anti-materialist stance, who may be viewed as an underachiever.^[10]

Popular culture

• "Slackers" have been the subject of many films and television shows, particularly comedies. Notable examples include the films Slacker, Slackers, Wayne's World, Clerks,^[12] The Big Lebowski, Road Trip, Harold & Kumar, Uncle Buck, BASEketball, Back to the Future, Good Burger, Goodbye Charlie Bright, Run Fatboy Run, Napoleon Dynamite, Freddy Got Fingered and An Ideal Husband. As well as the television shows: Peep Show, Men Behaving Badly, and My Name Is Earl.
• The movie Slacker Uprising described an attempt to rouse those under 30 to participate in the 2004 U.S. election.^[13] The Idler, a British magazine founded in 1993, represents an alternative to contemporary society's work ethic and aims "to return dignity to the art of loafing".^[14]
• In the television show Regular Show, a pair of groundskeepers consisting of a blue jay named Mordecai and a raccoon named Rigby avoid doing work at all costs. Their boss, an angry gumball machine named Benson usually calls them "worthless, lazy slackers". They usually only do their jobs when Benson yells at them "X or you're fired," replacing the X with a task to be completed.

See also

• Acedia, a state of listlessness
• Goldbricking, cyberslacking
• Goofing off, engaging in idle pastime while obligations are neglected
• Hikikomori, Japanese term for withdrawal from social life
• NEET, "Not in Employment, Education or Training"
• Procrastination, putting off impending tasks to a later time
• Refusal of work
• Slacker (music service)
• Slacktivism
• Sloth, deadly sin
• Work ethic

References

1. "Online Etymology Dictionary, slack (adj.)". Douglas Harper.
2. V. Bernal, "Colonial Moral Economy and the Discipline of Development: The Gezira Scheme and 'Modern' Sudan", Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 12, 1997, 447–79
3. Robert Sydney Smith, Warfare & Diplomacy in Pre-Colonial West Africa (University of Wisconsin Press 1989), 54-62
4. New York Times: "Take Slackers into Army", September 10, 1918, accessed April 21, 2010
5. Christopher Cappozolla, Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen (NY: Oxford University Press, 2008), 43-53, quotes 50, 229n
6. For one of many uses of the word during the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, see G. Louis Joughin and Edmund M. Morgan, The Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti (NY: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1948), 119
7. TIME: "The Draft: How it Works", September 23, 1940, accessed April 13, 2011. See also: New York Times: "Wheeler Assails Bureau 'Slackers'", September 29, 1943, accessed April 21, 2010; New York Times: "Nazis Round Up Slackers Facing British 8th Army", August 14, 1943, accessed April 21, 2010
8. Michael Straight, Trial by Television and Other Encounters (NY: Devon Press, 1979), 76
9. Internet Movie Database: "Memorable quotes for Back to the Future (1985)", accessed August 6, 2010
10. "slacker". Random House, Inc. 2006.
11. Compact Oxford English Dictionary. "slacker".
12. New York Times: Tom Lutz, "Doing Nothing", June 4, 2006 accessed August 6, 2010, and excerpt Tom Lutz, Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006)
13. Internet Movie Database: "Slacker Uprising (2007)", accessed August 6, 2010
14. The Idler: "About The Idler", accessed August 6, 2010