Hating on Web Words: A Diatribe of Love
Everyone has words or terminology that they hate. For instance, I have a personal grumble with referring to inanimate objects as “sexy,” as in: My new Dell has a sexy hard drive. No, it doesn’t. Let’s leave sexiness to people, please.
A new study looks at words spawned by the Internet that people hate. Blog, netiquette, cookie, and wiki rank high, with folksonomy topping the list.
Here’s my take:
blog: I’m cool with blog, blogging, and blogosphere… as nouns. When we hit verb territory – I blog about my turtles, etc. – I get irritated for some reason. Writing is an activity and craft and, on snooty days, art form that can be published in a blog format. So blog about your turtles on your own time, or perhaps on Creed’s blog.
netiquette: This is a totally fake word that doesn’t exist in real life or Internet life.
cookie: I can see how this one annoys people, but it holds high regard for me simply because Tony Soprano makes mention of them circa Season Two or so when he forcibly requests someone to shut down a lap top prior to a sensitive conversation, referencing “cookies and shit.” Don’t stop believing.
wiki: I get that wiki has kind of a Star Wars ring to it, but is it really all that bad? I think that people get more annoyed by the idea of wikis (collaborative platforms that let the public add and edit information) than the word itself.
folksonomy: Have all that many people even heard of folksonomy?
I had to think about my personal web-centric term that I hate, but I feel like I came up with a pretty good one:
MySpace: The name itself is fine. Just don’t use the word to refer to your own personal profile! You have a profile on a social networking website called MySpace. “MySpace” contains millions of such profiles.
So, good:
MySpace is mad popular. Almost too popular, you know?
Not good times a lot:
I blogged about my turtles on my MySpace.
