I'm well aware of the traditional meaning. Doesn't mean little kids have picked those words up and started applying them differently. You act like words can't change over time.

You wanna shout at me to get off your lawn next? :P

First I need to put in my dentures.

But no seriously it baffles me that the word has taken on like 3 more definitions in the time it took me to get not-so-gently corrected on my incorrect usage of the term 5 years ago.

I think the non-sexual meanings (plural) might be the original meaning, bucko. I'll check.

...I don't know who corrected you five years ago but I'm pretty sure gangbangers was what they called gang members when I was in high school like a billion old-ass cranky man years ago.

Might just be a regional thing.

Isn't language just wacky?

My crappy old Merriam Webster says gang bang comes from 1950 and is about copulation by several persons with another (passive) person and gangbanger (circa 1972) means member of a street gang.

Yeah, well. Shut up.

I'd never heard about that particular definition until I moved to Seattle to teach. This was the elementary school kids I mentioned

Then again, after moving back to my hometown, I spoke at my old high school and they used the term. Apparently the kids have changed a lot since I was there. Three years ago.

If y'all had played GTA San Andreas you'd know this shit.

e: although I, too, only knew the porn definition when I did and boy was I confused the first hour or so

That would explain a lot, actually.

Like, wow. Are you serious? I've had that game and I didn't know that because I never played it.

Just to get in very very late, the uniform groupthink thing can actually cut both ways. I went to a uniformed school and we were one of the most militant student bodies in the country and managed to get a whole boatload of ridiculous rules overturned, precisely because we were a unified group. We had some very strong-minded and radical student reps who lead student action and so the uniforms binded us against the administrators not in service to them. I will agree it mostly works the other way, but it doesn't have to.