ripoff

in almost every group i have worked with this year, at some point the word ripoff has come up.  ripoff can mean an imitation, usually a bad one.  for example,  music enthusiasts at the beginning of the 90s knew ice, ice baby was a ripoff (or to be fair, a sample) of the queen & david bowie song under pressure, and today, official copies of the song give credit to queen & bowie.  but at the time, vanilla ice offered a ludicrous comparison that supposedly showed the difference between the two:

ripoff can also be  a bad deal or theft, like in the lyrics of the good times theme song.  good times was a sit-com that  showed the experiences of a family and thier neighbors  in a project building in a Chicago ghetto (poor neighborhood).  the theme song evokes several images typical to ghetto living including easy credit ripoffs  mentioned at (:25) in the theme song. u can see michael jackson‘s little sister janet, who starred on the show from 1977-79, in this episode.

twitter is full of examples, and there is a #ripoff hashtag on twitter that produces several examples a day.  like this bad deal

>> @TheLastJesus Now that I have Blu-Ray, it only makes sense #Avatar be my first purchase. And at these prices, my only one. #ripoff

is the avatar blu-ray a ripoff?

and this imitation

>>@ultimodragon it’s sort of sad that when Uffie’s album finally comes out, she’ll just be derided as a Ke$ha ripoff.

 quit ripping off my yoga, bitch (uffie on the left, ke$ha on the right)

do u think one of these pop stars rips off the other?

uffie

ke$ha