Smack Talk

Smack talk (also smacktalk and talking smack) is a slang term seen in chat channels in chat room, blog, and MMOG conversations. It generally refers to the use of threatening or intentionally inflammatory language.

Smack talk is also a slang term used in sports. It refers to inflammatory comments made by a person or team in order to insult, anger, or annoy opponents. Although it began as a term used by sports fans and athletes, it has spread to all areas of culture where competition takes place. In the United States, it is synonymous with "trash talk".

The social interaction within MMOGs has been observed to be quite active and often leads to long-term social relationships. MMOG groups, such as "teams", "guilds" or "corporations", are composed of groups of people who often initially have no other social contact or interactions with each other. As a result, their conversations contain a subtext of discovery of language skills, social values, and intentions. One of the first indicators of these is the use or offense taken by the usage of smack talk. For the purpose of setting a social context or to comply with MMOG EULA restrictions, MMOG groups may establish bylaws, traditions, or rules (formal or informal) that either permit, discourage, or prohibit the use of smack talk in their conversations and postings.

Smack talk can also be used to track the sentiment or popularity of sport teams and the people that play and coach them. Using sentiment analysis SmackTalk Sports has implemented an algorithm that has ranked the top Heisman candidates similarly to how they are prognosticated to place through mainstream sport web sites. This same algorithm tracks the popularity of teams across the NFL and NCAA, as well as players within the sports. SmackTalk Sports is also tracking up to the second Smack talk from social media sites specific to the following major sports categories: NBA, NFL, MLB, NCAA, NHL, NASCAR, PGA and Cricket