Doom Wiki
Advertisement

Frad is a viral meme in the Doom community. It is often used in as an insult, although in a light-hearted way due to its meme nature. Examples of its use are:

 <Ricrob> myst: you frad
 <citrus> bill gates is a frad

The term can also be combined into other words and phrases for humor value, for example:

 <Arno> fraddididity (n.): The presence or property likened to a frad; 
        having frad-like properties.
 <DVS01> hmm, myst you gave me an idea.. New OS: FradBSD
 <Fradman> Frad Flinstone

Origin

The term originated with the following email sent to Simon "Fraggle" Howard from a friend:

To: simon_howard@emarkt.com
From: Nigel "P." Mulcaster <*****.*********@**********.***>
Subject: Doom
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 97 16:59:33 +0100 ( + )

To my mate Si',

I ain't bean seant no doome.  What gon rong?  Whi so longe to arive?  Is =
these personne
sendin' it me or no?  When gott, wil it worke?  Do it use much memoir? =
 'as this blokee for
got en to sen' it me?  I don' thin' it comin'.

You frad!!!!

Archibald Campbell, 10th Earl &1st Duke of Argyll (c.1651-1703)
NIGEL

It is likely that the original use of the term is a deliberate misspelling of the word "fraud".

The email was later posted on Tom "mystican" Robinson's website in his weblog. Discussion of the email on IRC and on websites led to it becoming a meme.

Mike "prower" Reid later registered the domain frad.org, which was used for email forwarding and to host a community blog website for a short time. An IRC bot named "frad" was used to run several IRC channels for a time.

The term has fallen into some disuse in recent years, probably as many of the people aware of the term have since left the Doom community.

Advertisement