What is the origin of "get a life"?
(Etymology)
...getting a life might have originally had something to do with getting another life as in the video games when your little guys got knocked off. I used to hear kids asking how many lives the other guy had left, etc. I'll 'get a life' if I ... So the expression or words 'get a life' could have fist appeared, in the 80's, but not quite with its present connotations.
It may next (or concurrently) have begun to be used by computer geeks who would spend hours on end at their terminals, and their PC became their life. They would be told kiddingly, or not so kiddingly, by friends, family, and other hackers to 'get a life.' No definite documentation or dates for this, however.
The first big-time use of the word in the media was in a 1987 Saturday Night Live skit in which William Shatner, Captain Kirk of Star Trek, does a parody on Trekkie fans. In the sketch, he is the guest of honor at a Star Trek convention. He is asked by fanatical fans wearing pointy ears, several trivia questions concerning the exact combinations of safes he had opened on various episodes (e.g. what was the combination to the safe in episode #38?). He tells these people at the end of the skit to 'move out of your mothers basement' and GET A LIFE...
From the American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms
get a life
Acquire some interests or relationships of one's own. For example, Stop sitting around and complaining-get a life. [Slang; late 1900s]
From the Jargon Dictionary: Get a life! imperitive. Hacker-standard way of suggesting that the person to whom it is directed has succumbed to terminal geekdom (see computer geek). Often heard on Usenet, esp. as a way of suggesting that the target is taking some obscure issue of theology too seriously. This exhortation was popularized by William Shatner on a 1987 "Saturday Night Live" episode in a speech that ended "Get a life!", but some respondents believe it to have been in use before then. It was certainly in wide use among hackers for years before achieving mainstream currency via the sitcom "Get A Life" in 1990.
(extracts from the "Wordwizard" site)
http://www.wordwizard.com/indexcommunity.htm
