The word random is certainly popular now, at least among the college-age crowd; as in, "As we walked down the crowded sidewalk, these random people kept coming up to us".
Does anybody know how this got started?
not sure, but my boys use it often, as well.
"well, that was random."
In common usage, we don't always use words in their technically correct sense. Even scientists, engineers, and technologists are often loose with their use of language amongst themselves, which can often cause misunderstandings to those lay persons who stumble into the conversation. Also, there are debates even in the scientific community as they come to understand what certain words ought to mean. For example, I think it's pretty clearly understood NOW that 'random' and 'chaotic' are not synonymous - even among the educated laity.
It's not clear to me in the example you give that the usage was incorrect, although I suspect by 'random" in this instance, the person meant "unexpected."
Yes, k--I think the intention is to get across that whatever happened appeared to happen randomly, or unexpectedly. But they change the syntax to where random modifies the noun, not the occurrence; so that the meaning is understandable, but sounds...odd. "We picked up all these random rocks", instead of, "We went around picking up rocks randomly" (or, "...picking up rocks at random").
I'm not sure there's that much intention. The students in my community college music classes use "random" as slang to describe things they don't understand. Students have used "random" to describe music by Arnold Schönberg (atonal, but highly structured), Milton Babbitt (total serialization), John Cage (OK, some of that really is stochastic), and W. A. Mozart (!! by an alto who hadn't learned her part).
"Random" also describes non-sequiturs that are then treated as hilarious jokes; Urban Dictionary has several examples. Anything is funny if it has a canned laugh track, right?
ah ... i see the disconnect.
I typically think in terms of "random variable" (which is really a function or mapping). The classic sense is say the value of a die roll, but the term clearly has wider utility than that.
One could have an occurrence to be, say, regular, but the person met random.
For example, one might write a program that outputs a random letter every 10 seconds. The occurrence is regular, but the value is random. (Or one might view the occurrence as a coupling of the time-stamp along with the message at that time.) This is a case where if two people were communicating about it, even if they were very sure about what they meant, they might ask a few questions of each other to confirm, "ah, yes, we agree what we mean by this."
I'm not sure how the word is used in a literary or other sense. But in the simulation world, it can modify just about any noun, although the particular intrepetation might take some explanation.
I *have* heard a lot of college and hs students using the word 'random' to refer to other things - stuff they don't understand, or like, or agree with it. I'm not sure when I first noticed this, but I think it's been going on for a long time in some circles - probably well before the recent period of meteoric rise of the internet (but maybe not so long ago as its creation).
Expounding on TFF's post in Jackie's terms:
If I go around collecting random rocks, the rocks are different, but I may have gotten them all at the same place or the same time.
If I go around collecting rocks at random, the rocks may be all the same, but I got them at different times or places.
"I *have* heard a lot of college and hs students using the word 'random' to refer to other things "
Dear God! I confess already! I often use the word random to refer to nappropriate or non sequitur comments, quirky individuals or habits, and generally weird or curious observations. Example: "Did you see that dog pee on my leg? Wow, that was pretty random!"
Now I expect the random murmering of the voices beneath the floorboards to quit their intrusions into my thought processes.
"Above all was the sense of hearing acute. I heard all things in the heaven and in the earth. I heard many things in hell."
...and W. A. Mozart (!! by an alto who hadn't learned her part).
Who did his best and was quite successful at making things sound random... with purpose. He was probably bored with his own tonal constraints.
Quote:
...and W. A. Mozart (!! by an alto who hadn't learned her part).
Who did his best and was quite successful at making things sound random... with purpose. He was probably bored with his own tonal constraints.
Ragnarok is nigh! The end of all things is upon us!! Musick just wrote something that could pass for complimentary about Gottlieb. 
Quote:
...and W. A. Mozart (!! by an alto who hadn't learned her part).
Who did his best and was quite successful at making things sound random... with purpose. He was probably bored with his own tonal constraints.
Yes! It's a lot more difficult to be creative within a restrictive framework -- cf. sonnet vs free verse. Even our resident musickal iconoclast has now more or less admitted this. 
It's a lot more difficult to be creative within a restrictive framework
I'm not so sure about that. Could the impression be due to the fact that lack of creativity is more difficult to spot in a random "framework"?
Last eve on the bus two young men were discussing a movie:
"It's a totally random movie."
Aha that's the first time I have heard random used to mean odd or weird
"I mean it's just random scenes, there's no story line."
Or not.