Random.... Are you sure ??
Don’t you hate it when people use the word ‘random’ inappropriately? People sometimes say, “I had quite a random night last night.”

Or they watch a film (let’s say Eyes Wide Shut, a film that isn’t straightforward and so could come across as non-sensical and odd) and proclaim, “That was a random film.”

Let’s get one thing straight. The word ‘random’ means to possess a degree of unpredictability or disorder. Let’s be painfully pedantic and examine the two example claims cited above, and apply this definition to them, and see what we may see.

“I had quite a random night last night.”

Did you?

Did you really?

Really? Did you?

In what way was it ‘random’? Hmm? In what way? Did it exhibit a high degree of unpredictability and/or disorder? What exactly was random about it?

I suspect the answer you would get would be along the lines of stating the locations and/or people involved on this night out. Maybe a few friends went to someone’s house, followed by a trip to the pub, perchance a club, then back to someone else’s house.

This isn’t that random. In fact, I would say it’s actually quite predictable. If you have a night out, this is what usually happens. If you never intended to go out, then the fact that you did could be considered randomly unpredictable, but not that unpredictable.

To make it truly random, there would need to be a high amount of disorder or unpredictability. On a night out, for instance, it is very unlikely that a scale model of the Golden Gate bridge would suddenly appear out of thin air, carried aloft by thirteen enormous grey apes, who would rush at you with said bridge in an aggressive manner, trailing brown custard in their enraged simian wake. This is a good example of an unpredictable event.

A good example of a disordered night out (as opposed to unpredictable) would be if there were events that happened in a haphazard way, with no rhyme or reason. For instance, a group of friends go to the pub, then a circus, then have a close encounter of the third kind with boggle-eyed time shrews, then find some pizza in a field, then learn calculus in a barn from an owl, then get a taxi home, and finally build a fire in the lobby of a YMCA. This would be highly disordered.

As for the statement: “That film was random.”

Well if things happened in it that were unexpected, that’s more surprising than random. Random suggests something with no order, but films do have a narrative most of the time, and so they’re ordered.

If a film was a series of unrelated scenes or images one after the other, that would be random.

But even if a film appeared to be a series of unrelated scenes or images, it might not be. They might actually be related, but you haven’t figured out what the relationship is. You might say the film INLAND EMPIRE is random, but I suspect it has an underlying structure that makes sense of the seemingly random content.

What this last point boils down to is if you think a film is random, it may just be because you’re not clever enough to work out what it means.

So, let’s stop saying, “I had a random night” and “That film was random.”

Let’s instead say, “I had a relatively predictable night, and I didn’t really understand that film.”
(20 InTheStink, Fri 9 Apr 2010, 9:27, 3 replies)

You're well Random Mate
don't fight me on this...... and don't pull the genetics card
(TwinkleFuckingToes Has a ingrown toe nail, Fri 9 Apr 2010, 9:31, closed)

Nice expansion on a theme:
b3ta.com/questions/buzzwords/post686497
(Che Grimsdale Best before:, Fri 9 Apr 2010, 9:49, closed)

yeah
and those sweets aren't really "random" either, just taken from a preselected group of alternatives.
(greatoldone Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl f'tagn, Fri 9 Apr 2010, 10:01, closed)