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It was in 2006, autumn I think, that I invented the term. Most of us here were at the time members of our old home, conservativeunderground, which used to give Skins's island the collywobbles. At the time, the popular slang name was either "DUmmie," which I thought unflattering, or "DUer," which I thought looked silly; the word looks like an elephant with a limp trunk.
One Sunday afternoon--I recall very well it was a Sunday afternoon--I came across a thread in which DUmmies or DUers were discussing the impeachment of then-vice-president Richard Cheney. I wish I could remember who all was there--there were about eight or ten of them--but the only one I remember in particular was Raven, the Bostonian Drunkard's mother.
I grew up without television, and early on when learning to read, I "saw" not only words, but also images, as I read.
In this case, it was as if I were an explorer in a dense dark jungle who suddenly stumbled upon a bunch of sinister-looking people sitting cross-legged around a campfire, in a clearing. They looked as one would imagine them to look, with tattoos, body mutilations, piercings, excessive cosmetictry, women with really big thighs wearing shorts a few sizes too small to accommodate their expansive backsides, pot-bellied guys either thin-haired or already bald, big holes in their earlobes, an other-worldly stare in their eyes. And since this was Skins's island, these were 97.8% white folk.
They were passing around voodoo dolls [the comments they were making] to each other for grunting-and-gooing examination and approval. Once in a while one of them, when looking at a really impressive voodoo doll, jumped up onto his feet, wiggle-waggled his armpits at the others, and ran around in a circle a few times.
So help me God, that is the exact and vivid image that popped into my head when reading the thread.
Later on, I began reading books by the famous anthropologist Margaret Mead, and discerned that not only did these people look like primitives, but also like primitives, they had their own special customs, taboos, hierarchy, fetishes, practices, dances and sports, and adoration of false gods.
I wrote a lot about the anthropological aspects of Skins's island, but as our good friend USA4ME has pointed out, much of that illumation evaporated during a couple of crashes of conservativecave, and I never bothered to rewrite it because there was too much to rewrite.
