Adding "dot com" to the end of a sentence?

Question

Overheard this one while I was getting my hair cut. The two ladies were arguing about whether or not a given shampoo was appropriate for a customer that had just left. Something about the customer's existing skin condition and a previous perm and/or coloring. The lady doing my hair was worried that the suggested shampoo might be too strong (chemically) and irritate the customer's scalp.

What caught my attention though was that she'd say things like "It'll dry their hair out dot com." There were two or three other sentences she ended in a similar manner, but that's the only one I remember.

And I haven't the faintest idea what she meant by this. I'm aware of the idea that some websites have URLs that are phrases or sentences (ending in a .com, for example, example.com), what I don't understand is why she spoke like that. She wasn't trying to advertise a website, they were just pain, English statements of her opinion and there was always a slight pause before she added it.

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. — tchrist, Nov 26 '19 at 01:58
The question is slightly misleading. The "dot com" is not added "to the end of the sentence", it is combined with a phrase (which in this case happens to be at the end of the sentence). It's not terribly important though; I'm "JustSaying.com". — Ray Butterworth, Nov 26 '19 at 14:21
@RayButterworth Are you saying that her sentence would be It'll "DryTheirHairOut.com" and that the dot-com is only attached to the phrase? As opposed to "It'llDryTheirHairOut.com" — Draco18s no longer trusts SE, Nov 26 '19 at 14:57
Whilst the Urban Dictionary and the Hashtag answers below are both absolutely correct, I still find it odd in the example given. — bornfromanegg, Nov 26 '19 at 15:09
it seems possible to me that it's derived from an auto-complete snafu.. a sentence should end with a full-stop, but text auto-complete might easily populate that as a .com because that's a more common usage! It's the sort of thing I'd leave in my texts for comedic effect, and the sort of thing that might get adopted into actual speech too. — Ruadhan2300, Nov 26 '19 at 16:08
@Draco18s, yes, it applies to the phrase, not the sentence. Decades ago people would do a similar thing attaching "Trade Mark" to their personal motto, catchphrase, etc. Later, people used "#hashtag" in a similar way. — Ray Butterworth, Nov 26 '19 at 16:25
@Ruadhan2300 I'll only accept that explanation if the woman doing my hair and vocalizing these words was, in fact, a robot. — Draco18s no longer trusts SE, Nov 26 '19 at 17:48
Fun fact: this question was shared by the official Stack Overflow Twitter account: https://twitter.com/StackOverflow/status/1199584911218401281 — Kevin Workman, Nov 28 '19 at 00:26
And on the Stack Overflow blog 2019-12-06, This Week #StackOverflowKnows About Infinity, Internet-Speak, and Password Storage (the last example) — Peter Mortensen, Dec 07 '19 at 12:10

Laurel · Accepted Answer · 2019-11-28T18:33:40.463

68

According to Urban Dictionary, it’s for emphasis:

Used to add emphasis to the ending of a phrase. Usually spoken with a slight pause prior to it, and with a deeper voice than normal.

Lets go get some food--I'm fucking hungry dot com.

As I understand it, you would expect X.com to be all about X, more so than any other website. Thus you have emphasis.

It’s either that or just for lolz.

I think I found an example in the wild, with a full URL:

w w w dot i am really hungry dot com forward slash somebody make me food please

Here’s another:

head hurt dot com slash me

Similar to this is using file extensions, something I’ve seen before but only online. Basically, instead of posting an actual image (or just saying words), people type a file name, such as “howdareyou.jpeg”. This is done even when the person isn’t thinking of a specific file. Like “dot com” this has more emphasis than just writing it as regular words.

Also similar is ™, seen for example even on Stack Exchange:

It's a piece of valuable flair™ you can place on any website to show off your combined Stack Exchange profiles
_Flair

The top bar of a Stack Exchange site has always been a bit of an odd place. It somehow combines user info, navigation, search, and a one-size-fits-all popup that includes hot network questions, a list of 100+ Stack Exchange sites, personal inbox messages, and other system notifications (lovingly referred to as The StackExchange™ MultiCollider SuperDropdown™).
_{Blog: A New Top Bar for Stack Exchange}

™ is used to emphasize that there is something special about the preceding word or phrase.

edited Nov 28 '19 at 18:33

answered Nov 25 '19 at 04:23

Laurel

66,382

Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. – tchrist Nov 26 '19 at 01:59
8

justforlolz.mp3 – RozzA Nov 26 '19 at 05:20
6

Learn something new every day, but still https://i.stack.imgur.com/EdtDu.jpg – MonkeyZeus Nov 26 '19 at 13:15
2

This use of ™ has a slightly sarcastic connotation. "Valuable flair™" implies that the flair is not, in fact, valuable. (Think about heavily branded consumer products, where every proper name on the box will have a ™ or a ® after it. The company wants you to know that it thinks all of its products are special enough to trademark, but often they're not really that special. Thus, ™ has come to connote "someone is treating this as more special than it is.") As far as I know, "head hurt dot com" and "howdareyou.jpeg" do not have this connotation. – zwol Nov 27 '19 at 20:01
@zwol When used on packaging the ™ or ® is sometimes there for legal reasons to either assert a common law trademark or provide notice of registration. Something does not have to be particularly "special" to be used as a trademark, though it does have to be non-generic. – TimothyAWiseman Nov 27 '19 at 20:11
2

@TimothyAWiseman Yes, but the colloquial sense of ™, applied to an ordinary word or phrase, comes not from the company's actual intentions, but from the impression that people get when they read the back cover copy with ™ sprinkled all over it. Which is that the company thinks it's worthwhile to trademark all of those terms even though all the actual products are meh. – zwol Nov 27 '19 at 20:55
In that particular context, "flair" is most likely a reference to Office Space (two clips out of the three scenes with it). Random other: 'Office Space' Actor Loses Lawsuit Over 'Flair' (so there may or may not be some actual IP stuff involved). – Peter Mortensen Nov 28 '19 at 17:13
@PeterMortensen Facebook used to have something called flair and Reddit still does (neither of which use "TM"), so I highly doubt that there's a legal aspect to it. In any case, that's not the only example here. There's no doubt that the TMs in the phrase "The StackExchange™ MultiCollider SuperDropdown™" have nothing to do with legalities (although the words may actually be legally enforceable as trademarks). See also this search of metas for "TM" for more examples. – Laurel Nov 28 '19 at 18:33

score 65 · Answer 2 · 2019-11-26T10:25:45.287

65

This is a slightly older equivalent of "hashtag x". E.g.

I'm going to the cafe to get a drink. #CaffeineKeepsMeAlive

(With the octothorpe (#) voiced as "hashtag")

Which came about as a tongue-in-cheek expression, after the website Twitter popularized using (written) hashtags at the end of short statements (as a tagging mechanism).

It simply mimics a widespread behavior seen online, in a joking way.

Potentially, the over-use of hashtags in corporate statements and advertising, may have also contributed to people using it in speech "ironically".

The "Dot Com" expression is just the same from the early 2000s

During the dot-com bubble, 1994-2000, there had been a rush of companies created entirely online with relatively flimsy business plans. Many of these rushed to buy domains that explained their specific business niche - entirely - in the domain name.

Beyond this, in the early 2000s, there were also a number of prominent companies that emerged whose names were literally the domain name. Some of these companies advertised heavily, with adverts re-iterating their name constantly.

For example, "Confused.com", advertised heavily on slogans such as:

Don't be confused. Be Confused.com.

And, "WeBuyAnyCar.com", whose adverts constantly repeated the phrase:

We buy any car (dot com!)

Similar to the more recent (although now also dated) phenomenon of saying "hashtag" explicitly; people then started using this in a tongue-in-cheek way, during speech.

Also, as most of these adverts were very in-your-face. When people use this as a phrase - it also adds some emphasis to what they're saying.

edited Nov 26 '19 at 10:25

answered Nov 25 '19 at 11:32

10

An even older variant of the same concept is "TM", implying that the preceding sentence is the trademarked slogan from some imaginary product. – IMSoP Nov 25 '19 at 18:16
imaginethat.gif – RozzA Nov 26 '19 at 05:19
3

You mean the hash sign. Hence "hashtag". A pound sign is a £. – Chris Melville Nov 26 '19 at 09:43
5

@ChrisMelville I did actually mean pound sign, but will update to octothorpe and include the symbol itself (#) to avoid ambiguity. – Nov 26 '19 at 10:25
2

@ChrisMelville You are correct in British English. You are wrong in American English. Both are acceptable here. – Martin Bonner supports Monica Nov 26 '19 at 10:27
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Octothorpe? Love it. #Octothorpetag. – Chris Melville Nov 26 '19 at 13:28
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In this country (UK) there is also a subculture which humorously subverts the adding "dot com" thing, by instead adding "Dot Cotton" - as in "We buy any car. Dot Cotton." – Jerb Nov 26 '19 at 13:40
@ChrisMelville You are the hero that Stack Exchange needs – Lightness Races in Orbit Nov 26 '19 at 19:51
3

Trivia: octothorpe is a relatively recent invention, coined by Bell labs engineers. It is a reference to the athlete Jim Thorpe, who was a popular celebrity at the time. – barbecue Nov 26 '19 at 20:27
The use of # meaning pound (of weight) is rarely used that way today, but was once fairly common in the US, as in A 5 # sack of flour. – Mike Harris Nov 27 '19 at 16:13

score 2 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 15 '20 at 07:40

2

From context and without any source or reference, it seems to me the person in question uses "dot com" for "period".

from MW - definition 5a(2)

period - used interjectionally to emphasize the finality of the preceding statement. "I don't remember — period."

edited Jun 15 '20 at 07:40

Community

1

answered Nov 25 '19 at 00:09

Centaurus

50,047

2

Would be an odd thing to do, and I'm I've lost her exact phrasing at this point ("dry their hair out dot com" is the only one I committed to memory, just so I could ask this question). But certainly plausible – Draco18s no longer trusts SE Nov 25 '19 at 02:00
2

People are odd ,) – eckes Nov 27 '19 at 11:06

Adding "dot com" to the end of a sentence?

3 Answers3