I always thought of FAFO as a condensed proverb meaning basically “Think about what you’re about to do and the potential consequences before you do it, otherwise you may overlook an obvious pitfall and blunder straight into it”. I’ve mostly seen it applied to people behaving recklessly in one way or another. Sometimes it’s rednecks doing some jackass style stunt with no payoff, sometimes it’s a business making an obvious blunder that could have easily been avoided, sometimes it’s a politician doing the same. In this sense it’s less about some notion that doing stupid things will come back to hurt you in some unpredictable way and more about the self inflicted consequences that could have been avoided with like 5 minutes of thought. Like you could just leave that snake alone that you can clearly see and aren’t being forced to approach, and you definitely don’t need to put your hand in it’s face and fuck with it, and oh shocked pikachu it bit you who could have seen this coming (except everyone). So to me at least, all it’s saying is just think for a minute before you do something, and maybe don’t do it if you’re most likely going to regret it.
So to summarize
Fuck around = do something reckless without thinking
Find out = suffer the avoidable consequences of your lack of forethought
yes, this is historically always how I’ve heard FAFO used - basically like a threat before someone does something stupid
but recently it seems like the meaning has significantly shifted, particularly in liberal communities and political contexts, to imply that people we don’t like politically will get what they deserve (a bit like /r/LeopardsAteMyFace)
an example was a posts in /r/MarchAgainstNazis titled “The arc of ‘F**king Around’ is long, but it bends toward ‘Finding Out’” (this is a remix of the Martin Luther King Jr quote)
So in a sense it’s still taking on some of the threatening tones originally used, but I feel like with a lot of liberals it turns into constant cope, waiting for the criminal political actors they obsess about get the justice that is owed
I always thought of FAFO as a condensed proverb meaning basically “Think about what you’re about to do and the potential consequences before you do it, otherwise you may overlook an obvious pitfall and blunder straight into it”. I’ve mostly seen it applied to people behaving recklessly in one way or another. Sometimes it’s rednecks doing some jackass style stunt with no payoff, sometimes it’s a business making an obvious blunder that could have easily been avoided, sometimes it’s a politician doing the same. In this sense it’s less about some notion that doing stupid things will come back to hurt you in some unpredictable way and more about the self inflicted consequences that could have been avoided with like 5 minutes of thought. Like you could just leave that snake alone that you can clearly see and aren’t being forced to approach, and you definitely don’t need to put your hand in it’s face and fuck with it, and oh shocked pikachu it bit you who could have seen this coming (except everyone). So to me at least, all it’s saying is just think for a minute before you do something, and maybe don’t do it if you’re most likely going to regret it.
So to summarize
Fuck around = do something reckless without thinking
Find out = suffer the avoidable consequences of your lack of forethought
yes, this is historically always how I’ve heard FAFO used - basically like a threat before someone does something stupid
but recently it seems like the meaning has significantly shifted, particularly in liberal communities and political contexts, to imply that people we don’t like politically will get what they deserve (a bit like /r/LeopardsAteMyFace)
an example was a posts in /r/MarchAgainstNazis titled “The arc of ‘F**king Around’ is long, but it bends toward ‘Finding Out’” (this is a remix of the Martin Luther King Jr quote)
So in a sense it’s still taking on some of the threatening tones originally used, but I feel like with a lot of liberals it turns into constant cope, waiting for the criminal political actors they obsess about get the justice that is owed
I agree, it’s more like “play stupid games, win stupid prizes”
If you got enough money, just buy the carnival.