"Turbo Encabulator" the Original
Why Hacker News recommends it
Used as the canonical reference for the jargon-parody trope, and as a joke whenever technobabble appears.
What it is
The earliest filmed version of the Turbo Encabulator technical-jargon parody, shot in the late 1970s with narrator Bud Haggert. It deadpans a stream of meaningless engineering language.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2016 to 2026.
What Hacker News said
Recommends Anarch157a · 2019-05 · on “Five Hundred and Seven Mechanical Movements (1908)”
I think you're gonna like this one [1]. The B-25 Mitchell instructional that was linked here some few weeks ago is also amazing [2]. [1]: [this video] [2]: [LINK]
Recommends NelsonMinar · 2021-07 · on “New mystery AWS product ‘Infinidash’ goes viral despite being entirely fictional”
There's a proud tradition of this kind of parody: the Turboencabluator is one of the most famous in engineering, a joke that goes back to 1944. [LINK] Bud Haggart's industrial training videos for the Turboencabulator from the 70s/80s are things of beauty. See [this video]
Recommends causality0 · 2023-11 · on “Rockwell Retro Encabulator [video]”
I don't know why people are always posting the Rockwell version when the older Turbo Emcabulator video is far superior. [this video]
Recommends Joel_Mckay · 2025-11 · on “Learning to read Arthur Whitney's C to become smart (2024)”
"Still it's amusing how Whitney's style seems to personally offend people" So it was for the lols after all... Notably, a Lisp interpreter written in Lisp is a common assignment for second year CS students. In a production setting, there is little reason to misappropriate resources for such toys. Bud Haggert still teaches smart people something very important about communication with interdisciplinary crowds: [this video] Doug Zongker's presentation similarly instructs people how to make better presentations to peers by demonstrating what not to do: [LINK] Best of luck =3
Cites robocat · 2021-10 · on “McKinsey never told the FDA it was working for both the FDA and opioid makers”
That is the long running “Turbo Encabulator” trope, the original is here [this video] but there are some wonderful rerenditions and tributes if you search for those keywords on YouTube.
Cites myrandomcomment · 2022-01 · on “Turboencabulator”
Here is the fun take - [LINK] And the original - [this video] Also curious as this was on Twitter the other day...how social mixed if this is the OPs reason for sharing.
Cites paranoidrobot · 2025-04 · on “Tunarr: Create and configure live TV channels from media on your servers”
There are youtube channels with old TV Ads. Some of those will be non-existant. You could also go down the Turbo Encabulator rabbit hole: [this video] [LINK]