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irritainment (eer.uh.TAYN.munt) n. Entertainment and media spectacles that are both annoying and compulsively watchable.

Example Citation:
Jim Sinclair, assistant manager of the Minnesota State Fair, St. Paul, explained how to treat food and beverage operations as entertainment, during the Midwest Fairs Assn. meeting here.

He first stated that everything they do at the fair is entertainment. "It's a matter of perspective and presentation." He said the catch word is 'eatatainment' when combining experiences. "Irritainment is a word we've come up with that means something is so annoying, you can't stop watching it. Present all but that." A good example was the O.J. Simpson murder trial.
—Tom Powell, "Minnesota's Sinclair promotes food as new 'eatatainment'," Amusement Business, June 10, 2002

Earliest Citation:
Rather than let heated tempers rise, let's blow off steam on the Net.Scandal mailing list . . . If you've got a beef, this is a good place to beat it to death. The list is "dedicated to the pursuit of sloth and irritainment," it says, and of course, so are we.
—Angela Gunn, "Online Grapevine," Computer Shopper, August 1, 1995

Related Words:
adrenaline television
CNN effect
dramality
eater-tainment
jump the shark
meta-entertainment
militainment
military-entertainment complex
peeping-Tom TV
promo-tainment
stunt programming
watercooler moment
weapon of mass distraction

Subject Category:
Culture - Television

Posted on November 7, 1996 at 1:39 PM
Updated on July 22, 2002 at 1:39 PM


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