Facetimey

Title: Facetimey

General Information about Item:

  • Verbal lore, slang
  • Language: English
  • Country of Origin: United States
  • Informant: Brandon Baldovin
  • Date Collected: 2/20/18

Informant Data:

  • Brandon Baldovin is a 3/2 engineering student at Dartmouth and Middlebury.  This means that he spends two years here at Dartmouth and three years at Middlebury during his college experience.  Brandon was a fascinating informant as he was able to compare the cultures of Dartmouth and Middlebury.  Brandon is the first of his family to attend Dartmouth.

Item:

  • Facetimey is a term used to describe someone who is very outgoing and talkative at Dartmouth.  It originates from the idea that extroverted individuals enjoy a lot of face time or socialization.  We were unable to determine whether the term is based off of the video chat app called FaceTime, but this is certainly a possibility.

Contextual Data:

  • Social/Cultural Context: Someone who is considered facetimey enjoys talking to many different people throughout the Dartmouth campus.  This person will spend most of his or her time on the first floor of the library due to the heavy student body traffic.  Typically this term is used with negative connotations as there is a certain point to which being intensely outgoing is socially unacceptable and annoying.

 

Informant’s Comments:

  • “Because of the 3/2 program, I began my Dartmouth experience during the 2017 summer term.  This was a bit of a strange time for me as the sophomores were the only class on campus, and I was completely new to the school.  I remember the first week… I tried to meet as many people as possible and someone called me ‘really facetimey.’  I was just trying to make friends because I was new to the school, but I may have overdone it a bit.  After that I was more cautious of being too extroverted.”  According to Brandon, this was the first slang term that he heard at Dartmouth.  Once he became aware of the significant amount of unique terms used on campus, he thought it was very strange since Middlebury had nothing of the sort.  However, as most students do, Brandon grew accustom to the unique tradition and found himself using the terms within a couple of weeks.

Collector’s Comments:

  • During my first year and a half here at Dartmouth, I have experienced the characteristics of facetimey people firsthand.  There are certain students who love to talk to everyone on campus.  Since we have a fairly small student body, it is easy to get to know a good portion of the population.  This is beneficial in general, but some students take it too far.  I think it is a good thing that this slang term exists because it can be used to pressure the overly outgoing students from annoying their fellow classmates.  

Here is one of Dartmouth’s most facetimey students in his natural habitat, the KAF line in Baker library.  Since the line is typically long at KAF cafe, it gives this particular student plenty of time to interact with his fellow classmates.  He asked to remain anonymous.

Collector’s Name: 

  • Will Bednarz

Tags/Keywords:

  • Verbal folklore, slang, Dartmouth, social capital, networking