I would like a personal explanation of the word THEY, and not one from
the dictionary.
They sent me ---
They say ---
They said ---

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Clarification of Question by clicker5-ga on 06 Aug 2003 01:48 PDT

Comments are welcome.

Hi clicker5,

Nice to see you again!

I too have often wondered about the elusive THEY. Who are they and why
do they always seem to know the answers and tell us what to do?

Since you want my own words, I'll give you THEY as I see it. 


THEY are faceless and all-knowing; bigger than we are; THEY are the
bosses, the corporations, and the government; THEY hand down our laws
and prescribe our morality; THEY are the people who hold the world's
scientific and medical knowledge; THEY keep the count and generate the
statistics; THEY are the source of wives tales, legends, and folk
wisdom; THEY spill secrets and break confidences; THEY are our
counselors and advisors; Our teachers and mentors; THEY are the crowd
that backs us and the mob we fear; THEY are those we follow and those
we shun; Our supporters and our critics; THEY are our friends and our
enemies; Our reasons and our excuses; THEY back us up when we are
right and THEY take the blame when we fall short; THEY are where the
buck stops when it doesn't stop here.


In short, THEY are who we invoke when we don't trust ourselves. 



How's that? :-)

-K~



GOOGLE ANSWERS SEARCH RESULTS = "They say"
http://answers.google.com/answers/main?cmd=search&q=%22they+say%22&qtype=all

Hi knowledge_seeker-ga:
Thank you for your 5 star answer.
clicker5-ga

Dear Clicker, 

I am not sure what you are trying to understand, but in sociology
"they" is a well known concept in the development of collective
identity, as distinguished from "we" [us, ours, etc.].

But, if "they" tell you so, how could you know it is the right
answer!?

THEY are those people who are not US.
And further to knowledge_seeker's answer, just because we don't trust
ourselves, it doesn't mean we trust THEM. ; )

Rissos.

In honor of this interesting question, I've composed an odd little
Western tale made from movie titles which include the word "they."

THEY

They All Came Out
They Came by Night
They Rode West
They Call Me Macho Woman
They Call Me Bruce
They Who Dare
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
They Are Killing the Horse
They Go Boom
They Will Never Do It Again
They Were Expendable
They Died with Their Boots On
They Asked for It

-------------------

My thanks to the Internet Movie Database, which made this possible.
:-)

~Pink

I know that everyone has a THEY story.
How about a mixture of personal comments on THEY.
I think they would like more stories about their collective self.

Clicker5

interesting question; AND interesting answer!