Product Code Database
A slacker is someone who habitually work aversion or lacks work ethic.
During World War I, U.S. Senator Miles Poindexter discussed whether inquiries "to separate the cowards and the slackers from those who had not violated the draft" had been managed properly. A San Francisco Chronicle headline on 7 September 1918, read, "Slacker Is Doused in Barrel of Paint".Christopher Cappozolla, Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen (NY: Oxford University Press, 2008), 43-53, quotes 50, 229nFor one of many uses of the word during the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti, see G. Louis Joughin and Edmund M. Morgan, The Legacy of Sacco and Vanzetti (NY: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1948), 119
The term was also used during the World War II period in the United States. In 1940, Time quoted the U.S. Army on managing the military draft efficiently: "War is not going to wait while every slacker resorts to endless appeals." TIME: "The Draft: How it Works", September 23, 1940, accessed 13 April 2011. See also: New York Times: "Wheeler Assails Bureau 'Slackers'", September 29, 1943, accessed 21 April 2010; New York Times: "Nazis Round Up Slackers Facing British 8th Army", August 14, 1943, accessed 21 April 2010
"Slacker" became widely used in the 1990s to refer to a type of apathetic youth who were cynical and uninterested in political or social causes. This type became a stereotype for members of Generation X. Richard Linklater, director of the aforementioned 1990 film, commented on the term's meaning in a 1995 interview, stating that "I think the cheapest definition of would be someone who's just lazy, hangin' out, doing nothing. I'd like to change that to somebody who's not doing what's expected of them. Somebody who's trying to live an interesting life, doing what they want to do, and if that takes time to find, so be it."
The term has connotations of "apathy and aimlessness". It is also used to refer to an educated person who avoids work, possibly as an antimaterialist stance, who may be viewed as an underachiever.
"Slackers" have been the subject of many films and television shows, particularly comedies. Notable examples include the films Slacker, Slackers, Clerks, New York Times: Tom Lutz, " Doing Nothing", June 4, 2006 accessed August 6, 2010, and excerpt Tom Lutz, Doing Nothing: A History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers, and Bums in America (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006) Hot Tub Time Machine, Bio-Dome, You, Me and Dupree, Bachelor Party, Stripes, Withnail and I, The Big Lebowski, Old School, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Trainspotting, Animal House, and Bill and Ted, as well as the television shows Freaks and Geeks, Spaced, and The Royle Family.
The Idler, a British magazine founded in 1993, represents an alternative to contemporary society's work ethic and aims "to return dignity to the art of loafing". The Idler: "About The Idler", accessed 6 August 2010
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