A representation of the fears and anxieties of culture at large. Right now, for example, the polterzeitgeist of the US would have to be terrorists. During the Thirties and Forties, Nazis. During the Fifties, Communists.
Smaller cultures can have their own, too. The polterzeitgeist of LiveJournal is censorship, for example; that of fans is mundanity.
It's a postmodern term for war that eschews any attempt to explain or rationalize it using outdated historical or economic precepts. People, it implies, just felt like throwing things. Mostly at each other.
Sudden and violent changes in cultural trends. E.g. the abrupt reappearance of fireside family sing-songs, using the paterfamilias's iPod as a karaoke machine. (I mean among non-filkers, obviously.)
Hmm ... Most people so far have implicitly parsed it as (noisy, disruptive (spirit of the times)). If we consider it to be a ((noisy, disruptive spirit) of the times), then it could be the latest protest fad.
It can only be parsed the first way if you're going by the German morphemes, otherwise it would be Zeitpoltergeist. But I suppose it could have a loanword interpretation.
A mysterious cultural angst that sudden pops into the popular culture, does some minor if fantastic harm, then vanishes.
The brief panic after the discovery of Mad Cow in the U.S. that sent the price of meat (briefly) sky-rocketing, the current lunacy about how social networking sites are a "smörgåsbord for sexual predators," the belief that aliens have landed in New Jersey and are being recruited for the Atlanta Falcons, are all examples of polterzeitgeist.
This is distinguished from things like worries over terrorism or the mortgage meltdown, about which there is actual reason to worry.
A poltergeist is a disruptive spirit and a zeitgeist is the spirit of the time. That means a polterzeitgeist would be a disruptive fashion, or a troublesome popular belief, i.e., something everybody's doing or thinking that's screwing up normal operations or relationships.
For example, "Those arabs are all terrorists and we've gotta get 'em all," would qualify as a polterzeitgeist.
A rumble-time ghost would be a spirit that appears only during a rumble. Perhaps the ghost of a gang member (funny how that means something different than "gangster") who was killed in a rumble, can't find peace, and now shows up every time there's a rumble, either to watch or to participate.
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Smaller cultures can have their own, too. The polterzeitgeist of LiveJournal is censorship, for example; that of fans is mundanity.
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*innocent*
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The brief panic after the discovery of Mad Cow in the U.S. that sent the price of meat (briefly) sky-rocketing, the current lunacy about how social networking sites are a "smörgåsbord for sexual predators," the belief that aliens have landed in New Jersey and are being recruited for the Atlanta Falcons, are all examples of polterzeitgeist.
This is distinguished from things like worries over terrorism or the mortgage meltdown, about which there is actual reason to worry.
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For example, "Those arabs are all terrorists and we've gotta get 'em all," would qualify as a polterzeitgeist.
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feeling sorry for myself that I can't make the housefilk and not wanting to work on a gorgeous northern illinois friday afternoon
alwosm