IceForce said:
Soooo, is there any truth to this?
It's probably just a 4chan joke, I dunno.
No. Swag either comes from the 19th century for stolen goods or booty (which is why sometimes you call freebies or stuff you get at conventions "swag") or from the word "swagger," which was originally a term used to refer to the way some Scotsmen walked, but the word eventually came to mean "the way one carries oneself." To say someone has swagger is to say they have a confident and self-assured presence. So, to have "swag" is to be confident.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swag_(disambiguation)
The "secretly we are gay" thing came around on the Internet to make fun of "swag."
Mournful Crow said:
We all know how the "Swag" trend started (at least I think we all do. I sure as hell don't, so I don't know why I'm sayin-), but what I don't know is whether the people who actively engage in it actually take it seriously or just engage in it with the full knowledge that it is a trend/term/etc. Does anyone on here know?
Some people take swag seriously, but only within very specific social groups. Stereotypically, urban gangs care about swag, but I've seen a lot of wannabe non-urban "gangs" brag on about their swag. The idea of "swag" has existed for a long time, it's just taken different forms and names over the years. The epitome of "swag" these days tends to revolve around having name-brand clothes, having lots of money, having a pimped out ride, having lots of girls, that sort of thing. In the 50s this was also a big deal, and pretty much the same standards applied. It wasn't called "swag" then, but the cool guys were always the ones who had the slickest style, the hippest ride, and the hottest babes. People have always found ways to distinguish themselves from their peers and try to be the hippest cat on the block. This generation's term for it happens to be "swag."
