Buzz Words of 2014

Is the media over-reacting just a tad?

Twitter: People are so easily offended these days! Atheism is a religion. Won't somebody think of the children? If we come from monkeys why are there still monkeys LOL! Why isn’t there a white history month? You should be worrying about (something completely different). Wake up, sheeple! Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. (Via Alex Andreou of the Guardian)

People are installing actual floodgates, 2 January.
flood tourism

listicle (list + article = 10 habits of mentally strong people)
devices: phones and tablets
classy, stay classy
intersectionality (seems to mean “white feminists including black women”)

tariff: Finally we’re admitting that energy companies having 20 different, complicated, tariffs makes it impossible to compare providers.

bichon: suddenly everybody’s got a bichon frise or is it freesay?
reshoring: David Cameron – bringing “offshore” jobs back “onshore”, January
Who’s with me? Twitter, Jan (Gone by July.)

Is “mindful” the new “holistic”?
upcycle: sand, and paint grey

A lot less whingeing about weather “panic”, but some people still posting “funny” jokes about panic over the floods (and especially the BBC weather warnings).

heinous: mainly US – That’s so heinous!
a pop of colour
retreat: First week of February, when the Somerset Levels have been flooded for a month and the
railway line at Dawlish has been washed away, used to mean “stop building flood defences, give up, let the Levels turn back into marsh and Ely turn back into an island”.

American liberals seem to be blaming everything on… Walt Disney. Especially Disney princesses.

typing gesture has taken over from telephone gesture (and text gesture)

Twitter meme Feb: “please RT” pics of a handwritten message (Some may be Photoshopped.)

stone: People have stopped saying “stone” for very (which they did very briefly a few years ago).

Flood moaning continues: David Aaronovitch is using the word “hysteria” and someone else asks “I wonder if the papers are over-reacting a touch?” “Whingeing” has been mentioned. And someone is “bored” with flood reports Feb 19.

snagging, snag list (Whatever it was, it has gone again.)

You can read a book on a “device” because people will think you’re checking email/FB/Twitter. (But old people will complain that young people spend all their time on “devices” sending selfies and texting their friends and updating Facebook instead of talking to people who are present.)

Americans are saying it’s racist to call people racist. (There’s a lot of grumbling about Black History Month.)

They’re talking about wearable computing again. (Every year for the last 20 years…)

Oh my days! is back. (Gone again, Dec.)

passion – you have to be “passionate” about what you do. Think this is our old friend “commitment”.

SEO is “now passé”. (salon.com)

data point (does it mean “fact”?)

A suitcase is now a bag.

Twitter meme: quoting inane stuff found on FB to supply evidence that FB is really lame and Twitter is the place to be.

derp: do something stupid
TERF: Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist
curate: now means “choose”, rather than “choose, research and conserve”.
together home (like forever home)

Lots of snarking about Nick Robinson: fawning on the Tories, talking out of turn on Crimea. (Mar 17)

misper: missing person

No one breaks a record or hits a target any more – they “smash” or "shatter" them.
And the Russians are “storming” targets, instead of attacking them. March 22 2014

granularity: fine detail

secret locations: probably been around for a while – enabled by technology
genrefication
The bien-pensant are now worrying about enjoying ruin porn without being like all those other people who like ruin porn (“disaster tourists”). The same may be happening with Brutalism – is it getting (gasp!) TOO POPULAR? abandonedplaces.com was, like, 20 years ago?

What to Say About hipsters: They wear glasses but they don’t need them. (Probably with plain glass instead of lenses.)

Now there’s “hysteria” about the Saharan smog, week of April 1.

It’s fashionable to go completely over the top about mild grammatical infringements. There are the usual threats to shoot anyone who says “Can I get a latte”, and stuff like this: “Someone sent me an email in which they opened quotation marks but never closed them, and now I haven't slept in two years.” I think it’s meant to be funny. And a bloke on Radio 4 said that when he visited the States he found himself saying “store” instead of shop and wanted to shoot himself.

Are “hashtag activists” the latest legitimate sneer target? (We don’t need to do anything about that, the hashtag activists are onto it.)

Kate, Wills and George are visiting New Zealand this week and the press are accused of “grovelling sycophancy” for covering their tour. And people are writing witty letters to the broadsheets about the coverage (early April).

boutique everything, even estate agent

Moral compass now means “moral code” or “moral sense”. (A moral compass would just point at Good (North), Bad (South), Complex (East) and Ambiguous (West).)

concern porn (over kidnapped girls)

trigger (Week of May 18. Pieces carry "trigger" warnings.)

Peak “peak” week. (May 23)

faceless bureaucrats (Are they dangerous lefties?)

Apparently nobody queues any more – they just have no manners not like in the Good Old Days. (Queues were invented in WWI. Before that people just milled about.)

shop: alter photograph in Photoshop
earthquake: not a terremoto, but political change

fawning: the Queen’s making a speech (6 April)

Poor Kirstie Allsop’s in the firing line again for suggesting that girls should skip uni and just get on with getting married and having children (or for being fat and posh, as some put it).

Giant jungle clearing slogans in Brazil (C’MON ENGLAND), snapped and put on Twitter, are a thing (August). (Or are they all photoshopped?)

gamification: Do you remember when everyone talked about gamification for about three months then forgot about it? (@MarkOneinFour)

enriching is the new improving

throat punch (ugh!)

People still (or again) saying this kind of thing: Why is feminism’s fundamental foundation built upon the falsifiable patriarchy theory. Which is its animus?

You had one job... (still going Dec)

People tweeting variations of: Opening a window to let out a fly and ending up with thirty midges, three wasps, two bees and an owl. (Sometimes a fox. Why steal tweets?)

After the Harris case, and allegations that many in parliament were involved in abuse of minors in the 70s and 80s, the thing to say is “Our obsession with pursuing paedophiles is a modern witchhunt”.

bucket hats are back (after about 15 years)

radicalisation now means “turned into a belligerent, extremist Muslim”

Interesting wedding photo opportunities seem to be a thing.

What to say about historic child abuse, Irish mother and baby homes etc: “They were different times, we can’t judge them by our standards.”

Vicious attacks on Laurie Penny for trying to get abusive reviews of her book removed from Amazon. (end July 2014-07-22. Lip-quivering, victimhood, petulant etc etc etc. Somehow complaining about CCTV and the nanny state is not lip-quivering victimhood.)

Pretended indifference to darling Prince George.

Crossrail diggers using “breakthrough” in its literal sense. (Like builders talking about “ground-breaking”.)

Indy Ref (Scottish Independence Referendum)

This week’s “Can I get a latte?” is the historic present. (Early August)

Week of Aug 4 many people complaining about the “glorification” of war. When pushed, they explain: “You know, parades and that.”

Of any group shot of politicians, say “U2 haven’t aged well, have they?” (and variations).

Mid-August, people are using “outgunned” in its literal sense.

EVERYBODY hates Richard Dawkins now.

Rain has not dampened the festivities at Notting Hill. (“Soggy revellers” were mentioned too, 25 Aug.)

Many things that are not storytelling are called storytelling. I think it means “PR”.

Much sneering about “threat levels”, 29 Aug.

Assimilation, multiculturalism, misogyny and political correctness all popular post the Rotherham report. (Also blaming “rural Pakistanis” for having the same attitudes towards young girls as Yorkshire policemen and social workers.)

Brutalist being used for any post-war building that isn’t pastiche or post-modern.

Video gamers whingeing deafeningly about Anita Sarkeesian. She got an award! And compensation! And she said videogames are sexist! And she obviously knew that bomb threat was just a troll! (She wrote some articles about sexism in video games, September.)

As Scotland goes to the polls everybody hates Nick Robinson again.

jolly hockeysticks: used to describe one of those pieces (in the Guardian) listing the phenomena that add up to Britishness. OK the writer mentioned Malory Towers. But she also mentioned fish and chips. Hockey was referenced nowhere.

onesie: No one shudders while using this word any more.

SJW: hashtag activists are now called SJWs or “social justice warriors”. They are full of “faux outrage” over #gamergate.

And Owen Jones, of course, is just a “champagne socialist”. (Only a fake lefty? Then surely he’s no threat?)

nude selfies: Apparently you have to take one and send it to your romantic prospect.

surveil: Anxiety about governments “surveiling” the internet, last week of Sept.

Selfie bashing is so 2013! (M. v. Aufschnaiter @mva_1000)

egg account: anonymous Twitter account

Cool bananas! (It's gone now.)

People tweeting re the smell of burning dust second week October (from the central heating they have just turned on).

#gamergate rumbles on. Three women and their children have been hounded from their homes by death threats, but Gamergate are the victims. The SJWs (social justice warriors) are all in it for the attention and compensation. (A bit like those climate change scientists who just want to keep their jobs.)

longform still popular: It means Americans writing repetitious articles that have made their point by two-thirds of the way in.

#gamergate has hit the mainstream media, 17 Oct - usually taking the form “Who are these wankers?”

twee: It seems to be OK now to point out how many things are.

The accusations of “panic” about Ebola have begun, 20 Oct.

As two-year sentences for trolls are talked of, the Stephen Fry defence (everyone’s so easily offended nowadays!) resurges, 20 Oct. (The two-year sentence has been in the Bill since July.)

Twitterwise, it has been a year of astroturf accounts, rhetoric wars and battling Eliza-bots. (Just like dear old usenet.)

What To Say About Trolling, 21 Oct: However the authorities respond, they’ve got it wrong somehow. Because, you know, they’re the Establishment.

The middle classes’ annual poppy indignation meeting has started, 24 Oct. “Terrifying poppy propaganda” (spoken adverts on tube and buses)

Ian Hislop is still holding out against Twitter.

Tried to remember how to hate Halloween: US import; commercialised; intrusive etc. But the kids love it so much it's all just 'Bah Humbug!' (James O'Brien ‏@mrjamesob)

A lot of mean-spirited snarking about people wearing T shirts saying THIS IS WHAT A FEMINIST LOOKS LIKE, 30 Oct. It’s like wearing a poppy! (What a difference from the 80s, when everyone wore a Friends of the Earth badge, a stop the bloody fur trade brooch, a Frankie Says Relax T shirt etc etc etc. Though it did make more sense back then, when feminists had a look.)

People have stopped making a terrible fuss when anyone unfollows them on Twitter. They never tweeted about their meals, but they do tweet every time their pet throws up, farts, drools, vomits or shits on the sofa. They could stop doing that.

The poppy display at the Tower, and the viewing crowds, “glorify war”. (Sian Williams points out that “glory” is part of the language of war: Death or glory, the glorious dead.)

#gamergate latest is getting tame “feminists” (who may not even be real people) to quote each other dissing “censorious feminism”. You know, the kind that doesn’t like sexism, or death and rape threats.

UKIP supporters say: “I’m just saying what everybody else is thinking.”

iceberg homes: Create another three stories – in your basement.

Badges are back.
Kim Kardashian’s “pre-Photoshop” pictures were Photoshopped.

Some idiot comes up with yet another reason why rape isn’t rape.
broken: All kinds of things still are.

storied: "Even in her storied position today..." (Guardian, Nov) “Storied” is American for “celebrated” or “historic”. Here used to mean something like “highly respected” or “prominent”.

normcore: Over so soon?

Of course gamergaters are conducting the argument as if it was a video game, winnning points or rounds, using arguments or people as “shields”, branding people friends or enemies, you call me misogynist I call you misandrist...

In the context of schools, “teaching children British values” means “preparing children for life in modern Britain”, which is quite sensible really. (My school prepared us for life in medieval France.)

The middle classes are all hating Black Friday because it’s American. And chavs are hitting each other with tellies.

This year’s meme: Nobody says thank you any more!

More here, and links to the rest.