In Response to FireGeezer . . . The Meaning of Hoopie?
June 29, 2009 by FF184
First off, I want to thank FireGeezer from FireGeezer.com for the article about Hoopie World in his Morning Lineup yesterday. You can read that Hoopie World announcement here. For those that haven’t visited FireGeezer.com before, I highly recommend his blog as a great source of Fire Rescue news.
Since FireGeezer was asking where the name Hoopie World came from, and others have asked the question as well, I want to try to clarify and explain the origin. I am not the original owner of the site, I took over in 2006 from Mike Krysik, so Mike is the one that actually came up with the name. Since the site already had a pretty loyal visitor base, and the site name was unique, I decided not to change the name.
In these parts of the country, the words Hoopie and Whacker are often interchangeable and used to describe a person that is too wrapped up in the fire service. To the worst extreme, when used in derogatory terms, these are the guys that have the full-size light bar on a little Yugo where the light bar costs more than the actual car.
To the lesser extreme, Hoopies are just guys that enjoy firefighting, enjoy taking pictures on scene and reporting on incidents, and enjoy discussing the incidents both past and present.
Our HoopieWorld.com Tshirts even feature a Top 10 “You know you are a whacker when . . .” as a funny way to kind of laugh at some of the funny things firefighters do. Here is the back of the shirt, see how many apply to you 
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[...] with some folks referring to Hoopies and Whackers. Read the background on this regional slang HERE and be sure you read far enough to catch the “You know you might be a Whacker [...]