DIFTS: Do It For The Story
…
So I was over at a friend’s last night for dinner, and she let me in on something kind of awesome that’s swirling among the existentially-hungry, generally-affluent Catholic school boys she teaches. Wow. (If any of them reads this I guess I’m going to sound majorly out of touch for even mentioning it, but that’s a risk I’m gonna have to take.)
Apparently, it has become this thing to go around saying “DIFTS.” It stands for “Do It For The Story.” And it’s in the Urban Dictionary:
1. DIFTSAbbrv. Do It For The StoryOften used to make someone do something they don’t necessarily want to do. Making things happen that normally would not stricly to be able to tell people about it. Doing things you would not normally do because of the memories you will have.James : Yo man lets go out, dollar beers.Sean : Can’t do it man, got a huge final tommorow.James : Comon man lotta girls, going to be epic nightSean : Test tommorow… CAN’TJames : DIFTSSean : DAMMIT MAN, ill go get ready…
Isn’t that cool? In my day we just chanted, “Do it, do it!” or pressured each other with a complicated “point” system. DIFTS is also kind of bleak, but in the process it’s such a marvelous recognition—in a particularly obnoxious high-school-boy idiom—of how crucially we depend on our stories and how worthwhile it is to sacrifice on their behalf.
If you’re into it too, you can buy DIFTS swag. And you can post your own douchey DIFTS party tips at the official blog.
Nathan Schneider is an editor of Killing the Buddha and writes about religion, reason, and violence for a variety of publications. He is also a founding editor of Waging Nonviolence. His first two books, published by University of California Press in 2013, are God in Proof: The Story of a Search from the Ancients to the Internet and Thank You, Anarchy: Notes from the Occupy Apocalypse. Visit his website at The Row Boat.