Dare I ask which novel and which publisher?
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Words or phrases that annoy you (even if you can't explain why) . . .
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Yes. I worked with a young man who used all the variants of "! r i c k" and it sounded so stupid. (where the ! is an 'f')
About the only one I’m okay with was found in the series Battlestar Galactica (the Ronald D. Moore version), as it’s portraying a fictitious society which resembles our own in a number of ways, but isn’t.
I don't know why I said "novel"; it's a collection of short stories. First Person Singular by Haruki Murakami, published by Alfred A Knopf.
During the more halcyon days of the Internet (when most using it still capitalized it, before the dark curtain of social media and web 2.0’s “user is the product” machinations draped this planet), there was a tendency to append “web” to existing words from what folks then would refer to as “meatspace” (today, just “irl”). There, along with “web”, found the overuse of “net” in the same general vein — e.g., the “netizen” and also “netdesign” come to mind.
Some of them slipped into quick disuse, such as “webhead” — what today would amount to as “extremely online”. Another was “webtoon”, and not too far from that, was “webzine”. They never annoyed me, but I also didn’t expect them to have a long life.
A few other web-this-that-other examples used to annoy me, but then I stopped worrying and learnt to love the bomb, or something. The main one: “blog” — short for “web log”. I resisted that one for probably a half-dozen years, possibly a bit longer. What changed? I opened a blogspot account, because in the late aughts, that was an actual thing. My brain parsed “blog” as adjacent to “barf”, as in, “Oh no, I'm gonna blog,” followed by running to the can. Besides, there was already journalling, such as LiveJournal. But “blog” won that one.
[Adjacent to “blog”, but one I still hesitate to use, is “app”. Apple, it’s an application, and it’s y’all’s fault for unleashing that one and letting it loose on this tender, bright-eyed world which is no more. (I could also nitpick on “podcast” as an offspring of “webtoon” and another example I get into in a moment).]
But some of those “webologisms” (see what I did there?), to this day, still send me into a total, hair-pulling tizzy — an expression best depicted by that old, monochrome, reddit-era illustration of a frustrated Jackie Chan.
Top on that list: “webinar”. (And the reason why I sat to make this post.)
Though the neologism has roots in those freewheeling days of the '90s, all I can say to its continued use is, JFC people, have y’all ever participated actively in an actual, bona fide seminar? You know, like in university, where it’s just the prof and maybe a dozen or two dozen students, really digging into a topic? There’s no comparison between the two. “Webinars” are more like “conference calls” than seminars. (The announced promise of a “webinar” affiliated with an upcoming event series instantly and always glazes the eyes of my brain.)
A near runner-up: “webisode”. Please, for the love of everything warm, fuzzy, and kind still left in this world, “episode” works just fine. Several slots below that is “webmail” (because email stopped being email, I guess, when user-is-the-product services like yahoo, gmail, and 365 worked to coax people away from as much reliance on POP3 and IMAP retrieval with a local email client by turning those now-webmail accounts into everything-accounts).
Much lower on the current web-annoyances list, yet still an annoyance (which I won't be taking apart for reasons which would veer hard toward the gravitationally ejected planet of PRSI, now on a trajectory toward interstellar space), is “webmaster”. Bih plz. You totally skipped webapprentice because you didn’t have a webmentor. You didn’t even have a webtraining, you webpadawan. Beyond that angle, the rest is PRSI land (last seen passing the orbit of Neptune).
Happy rainy Saturday, everyone. Which internet- and/or web-oriented neologisms still scratch at you to this day? Even something so ubiquitous as “email” is not exempt here!
Some of them slipped into quick disuse, such as “webhead” — what today would amount to as “extremely online”. Another was “webtoon”, and not too far from that, was “webzine”. They never annoyed me, but I also didn’t expect them to have a long life.
A few other web-this-that-other examples used to annoy me, but then I stopped worrying and learnt to love the bomb, or something. The main one: “blog” — short for “web log”. I resisted that one for probably a half-dozen years, possibly a bit longer. What changed? I opened a blogspot account, because in the late aughts, that was an actual thing. My brain parsed “blog” as adjacent to “barf”, as in, “Oh no, I'm gonna blog,” followed by running to the can. Besides, there was already journalling, such as LiveJournal. But “blog” won that one.
[Adjacent to “blog”, but one I still hesitate to use, is “app”. Apple, it’s an application, and it’s y’all’s fault for unleashing that one and letting it loose on this tender, bright-eyed world which is no more. (I could also nitpick on “podcast” as an offspring of “webtoon” and another example I get into in a moment).]
But some of those “webologisms” (see what I did there?), to this day, still send me into a total, hair-pulling tizzy — an expression best depicted by that old, monochrome, reddit-era illustration of a frustrated Jackie Chan.
Top on that list: “webinar”. (And the reason why I sat to make this post.)
Though the neologism has roots in those freewheeling days of the '90s, all I can say to its continued use is, JFC people, have y’all ever participated actively in an actual, bona fide seminar? You know, like in university, where it’s just the prof and maybe a dozen or two dozen students, really digging into a topic? There’s no comparison between the two. “Webinars” are more like “conference calls” than seminars. (The announced promise of a “webinar” affiliated with an upcoming event series instantly and always glazes the eyes of my brain.)
A near runner-up: “webisode”. Please, for the love of everything warm, fuzzy, and kind still left in this world, “episode” works just fine. Several slots below that is “webmail” (because email stopped being email, I guess, when user-is-the-product services like yahoo, gmail, and 365 worked to coax people away from as much reliance on POP3 and IMAP retrieval with a local email client by turning those now-webmail accounts into everything-accounts).
Much lower on the current web-annoyances list, yet still an annoyance (which I won't be taking apart for reasons which would veer hard toward the gravitationally ejected planet of PRSI, now on a trajectory toward interstellar space), is “webmaster”. Bih plz. You totally skipped webapprentice because you didn’t have a webmentor. You didn’t even have a webtraining, you webpadawan. Beyond that angle, the rest is PRSI land (last seen passing the orbit of Neptune).
Happy rainy Saturday, everyone. Which internet- and/or web-oriented neologisms still scratch at you to this day? Even something so ubiquitous as “email” is not exempt here!
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shouldn't that be - to each their own?
an annoying feature of some peoples' sentences here in australia is a perceived question of agreement at the end of a declarative statement …
as in - the bus is running late, hay?
that maybe your truth but it’s not mine.
haha 😛
I believe that’s just a variant of the good old-fashioned question tag, as in “the bus is running late, isn’t it?”
In short, language evolves.
As any evolution, it involves agents of change and natural selection. The agents of change for a language, as far as I can tell, are:
- expedience/convenience (things becoming easier to say)
- contact with other languages
- change in the living circumstances of the speakers of the language, requiring new things, actions or concepts to be expressed.
The creation and subsequent massive popularisation of the Internet brought about a substantial change to the lives of most people. Changes and additions to the language did necessarily follow, and are still constantly bubbling up. Those changes that a majority of speakers find useful (for being succinct, expressive, effective, etc.) are the ones that survive and become part of the language.
There is a curmudgeon in most of us who wishes that things would stay the same, but with language (and most other things) that just isn’t happening.
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Yah, I think I said those very words a bit earlier, but a bit more descriptively.
You left out: aggressive, top-down marketing (stuff like “webinar”, “podcast”, “app”, “downsizing”, “rapid unscheduled disassembly”, and so on). This is from where my post last day found its roots and drew its nutrients into a cranky rainy Saturday kvetching (today, however, is nice and sunny, and I am, too).
Oh, I love organic, language evolution — everyday (street) vernacular, in particular. That’s how and where human culture develops.
What I dislike, however, are corporate-oriented or -originated neologisms, often marketed aggressively into widespread ubiquity — some succeeding with their aim and “paying off”, many more not — which is anything but organically evolved in any meaningful manner or sense. There’s nothing organic about its origin, intent, or method of propagation.
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'star' …
in sport these days, anyone who vaguely stands out in a game is now a 'star'.
whatever happened to 'player'?
anyway, in a team sport surely there are no 'stars' only the team.
Harlem Globetrotters being the only worthy exception imho.
Bobby 'Showboat' Hall - now he was a star in an all-star team and the shortest in height if i recall correctly.
'evolves' …
nothing 'develops' anymore, it only 'evolves'.
comes from the word 'evolution', which is dubious concept at best 🥸
in sport these days, anyone who vaguely stands out in a game is now a 'star'.
whatever happened to 'player'?
anyway, in a team sport surely there are no 'stars' only the team.
Harlem Globetrotters being the only worthy exception imho.
Bobby 'Showboat' Hall - now he was a star in an all-star team and the shortest in height if i recall correctly.
'evolves' …
nothing 'develops' anymore, it only 'evolves'.
comes from the word 'evolution', which is dubious concept at best 🥸
Heck, just the word “star” referring to anything other than a stellar object, a five-pointed echinoderm, drawn symbol along those lines, or an Erasure single from May 1990, is mentally tiresome to my head. It’s up there on the numbing list with “influencer”.
Misuse of “evolves” (such as when describing the life of an operating system) belongs up there with “grow” (when used as a transitive verb relating to anything other than a natural entity, such as a life form or… a star). 🌟
I have never heard anyone complain about the use of language in my lifetime. Admittedly never asked anyone about it. This is the only place I have hear anyone mentioning it.
You're kidding, right? As you can see from this thread, it's a pretty hot topic. It's also common in a lot of comedy. Here's a funny clip from Curb Your Enthusiasm complaining about the cliche phrase "having said that" for example:
Or could it just be that people like to wallow in being annoyed, offended, disappointed etc., especially on the Internet?
Or could it just be that people like to wallow in being annoyed, offended, disappointed etc., especially on the Internet?
Well there, I don’t know about “wallowing”, but I do know the signs of a baby neologism whose time has come to be a permanent part of our world of prescribing a word to describe a meaning: namely, the term ******tification, coined by tech journalist and sci-fi author Cory Doctorow, to describe:
I came upon this glorious (still-)new word whilst reading about the antics and shenanigans happening over at Bandcamp (what a hecking mess).
For as much as one might complain about words on a discussion topic on that very thing, one can also laud some of the words, as I’m doing here. It’s not my first time, either.
Also, a casual browsing of this thread, @dotnet , at least the last dozen or so pages, ought to reveal how some people actually do like certain words which others may dislike. It’s not all sour grapes and melted ice cream — much as you’re hasty to grab your broad-stroked paintbrush and go to town.