[WiZ] One Prozac a Day

[WiZ]

The following sentence has a relevant significance for me. What is it?

It's time we talked about the elephant in the room: the tragically hip, those committed watchers of anime who would rather listen to alternative pop than Boybands 24/7, with their paleo diets, ciabatta, lattes and microbrews. A scourge even before the heady days of the net, where one could find lurking behind any IP address some vile adware, a sexual predator, or a user of the N-Word without the appropriate privileges!

No caveat.

[Doriana]

Is the content of the sentence relevant? Some linguistic/structural feature of the sentence that's independent of the content? Such as the number of words? the number of letters per word? first/last/n-th letter of each word?

Relevant that it's actually two sentences? Or is that just me being nitpicky?

Did you come up with the sentence? Did someone else?

Any writing contests relevant?

Is it some weirdly long mnemonic?

[WiZ]

Is the content of the sentence relevant? in terms of its meaning? no Some linguistic/structural feature of the sentence yes that's independent of the content? but no Such as the number of words? the number of letters per word? first/last/n-th letter of each word? no to these

Relevant that it's actually two sentences? no, that was WiZ getting too excited about posting. Feel free to substitute 'segment', 'paragraph' or 'text'. Or is that just me being nitpicky? Never. Nitpicking is a key discipline in lateral thinking

Did you come up with the sentence? yes Did someone else? no

Any writing contests relevant? No - not even L.L.

Is it some weirdly long mnemonic? No

Although I have indeed made at least one weirdly long mnemonic - my one for remembering the categories for Future Problem Solving was 'Bad terrorists steal every elephant that reads Goosebumps every afternoon, but police pigs don't eat LCMs.' Couldn't for the life of me tell you what the categories were now, but remember the mnemonic in dazzling technicolour.

[Doriana]

If any of the words were replaced with synonyms, would the sentence retain its significance?

Does the sentence have to be written down to have significance? be said out loud? or would it suffice if it just existed in your head?

[AlbatrossLover]

Would the sentence have the same significance in a different language? Does the relevant feature of the sentence have something to do with the number/frequency of a certain type of word (like nouns/adjectives)?

[WiZ]

Doriana

If any of the words were replaced with synonyms, would the sentence retain its significance? yope

Does the sentence have to be written down to have significance? be said out loud? no to both or would it suffice if it just existed in your head? yes - but it would have been much harder to run as a puzzle!

AlbatrossLover

Would the sentence have the same significance in a different language? yes, at least partly, depending on the language Does the relevant feature of the sentence have something to do with the number/frequency of a certain type of word (like nouns/adjectives)? no

[AlbatrossLover]

Is the actual meaning of any of the words relevant? The number of syllables each word has? The origin of the words?

Would the significance of the sentence remain if you changed anime to movies? Paleo to vegan? Ciabatta to sourdough? If you decided to write it without any articles?

[LemonCurry]

So you benefit in some way from this sentence?
If so, on your job? In everyday life? Family life? Spare time activities? Would it be likely that other people benefited from using this sentence (for an appropriate definition of "using") as well?

Is this sentence used as a placeholder text?

[Balin]

Is it relevant when the words or terms in the sentence were coined?

[Doriana]

Sending a WAG/possible $poyler based on Balin's last question

[peter365]

Are song lyrics or movie quotations relevant?

[trebor]

Is the band The Tragically Hip relevant? Or Elephant Parts, the collection is skits they took their name from?

[WiZ]

AlbatrossLover

Is the actual meaning of any of the words relevant? The number of syllables each word has? no to both The origin of the words? yes, although DoyD of 'origin'

Would the significance of the sentence remain if you changed anime to movies? to a lesser extent Paleo to vegan? to a lesser extent Ciabatta to sourdough? to a lesser extent If you decided to write it without any articles? to same extent

LemonCurry

So you benefit in some way from this sentence? no, outside of getting a puzzle out of it
If so, on your job? In everyday life? Family life? no to these Spare time activities? see above Would it be likely that other people benefited from using this sentence (for an appropriate definition of "using") as well? no

Is this sentence used as a placeholder text? no(rem ipsum)

Balin

Is it relevant when the words or terms in the sentence were coined? You son of Fundin... yes

Doriana

Sending a WAG/possible $poyler based on Balin's last question And you are correct!

Peter

Are song lyrics or movie quotations relevant? Not to the sentence itself, but a certain song lyric fragment is a key to a key...

Trebor

Is the band The Tragically Hip relevant? Or Elephant Parts, the collection is skits they took their name from? no to both

[AlbatrossLover]

Does the sentence use words that were coined in the year you were born?

[Balin]

I think you've got it, having seen a Reddit comment about when ciabatta was created and connecting it to previous WiZzles.

[WiZ]

AlbatrossLover

Does the sentence use words that were coined in the year you were born?

***** SPOILER *****

The sentence is saturated with words and phrases that were added to the dictionary in 1985, the year I was born:

It's time we talked about the elephant in the room: the tragically hip, those committed watchers of anime who would rather listen to alternative pop than Boybands 24/7, with their paleo diets, ciabatta, lattes and microbrews. A scourge even before the heady days of the net, where one could find lurking behind any IP address some vile adware, a sexual predator, or a user of the N-Word without the appropriate privileges!

Congratulations to Doriana, AlbatrossLover and (presumably) Balin on the solution, and thank you everyone for playing!

The title is taken from the song '1985' by Bowling for Soup. The spoiler tag is also derived from a 1985 addition. I think I like the 2020 addition of 'WiZzles'.

[LemonCurry]

Well that's cool, and now I want to make up my own such sentence, which proves to be not easy.
While I'm lucky enough that Duden, the standard German dictionary, released a new edition in 1973, they do not have such a time-traveling page, and I have to do some legwork looking for old articles about the 1973 Duden issue.

While I've found some of these, the examples listed there for new 1973 entries are expressions one doesn't think they're just 47 years old, but rather around forever. That makes one feel really old...