Check out this article on The Most Hated Words on the Internet. Funny enough, the term “blog,” rests atop the list. Most words in the English language are arbitrarily assigned. The only reason that we call a tall object with bark and leaves a “tree,” is because at one point in history, a group of important people agreed upon the name. A chunk full of other names have been borrowed from other languages and some words have even been created in error. Ahh, behold one of my favorite classes in college: Structures of Modern English.
I would argue that hating a word is a silly concept to begin with. The English language is a great source of nouns, verbs, slang, nonesense, phonology and… you get the point. Instead of cringing at the constonant ridden “blog” word, you could simply just call it “web journal.” Yes, I can see it now. “Hey, guys I haven’t written in my web journal in a long time.” Unfortunately the consequence of a comment like that would be getting a pocket proctector for your birthday that year.
Love it or Hate it, Internet jargon has made quite the impact in today’s technological milieu. Additional words, especially slang, are necessary to make you seem like less of a dork when discussing the latest trends in media culture. And since I have yet to see anyone speak perfect Standard English (show me if you can find someone) I will continue to scoff at the notion that certain words can be “hated.” Peanut butter-internet-history-viewing-COOKIE anyone?
Posted by mediamogul 