Litwit Lounge discussion

Facebook's 2009 Word of the Year

OMG! It’s that time of year again! For realsies!

We just tossed the rotten jack-o’-lantern and already New Oxford American Dictionary announces its “Word of the Year.” For 2009, that word is a verb, one with which we in our social network-obsessed culture should be very familiar: “Unfriend: To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.”

Let the harrumphing begin! And then put a sock in it, my friend. Language evolves. Civilization fails to end. It has been ever thus. There are 300 million plus users on Facebook worldwide. Even if you and your spell-checker don’t approve of the NOAD’s newest verb “unfriend,” odds are, you’ve done it. OMG! It’s that time of year again! For realsies!

We just tossed the rotten jack-o’-lantern and already New Oxford American Dictionary announces its “Word of the Year.” For 2009, that word is a verb, one with which we in our social network-obsessed culture should be very familiar: “Unfriend: To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.”

Click here for complete article.

I have just used the word "unfriend", though I'm not proud of it...!

I call it "de-friending"

A few civilizations ended: Mayans, Aztecs, the ones that got buried by the volcano in Italy? so we can hope for the best. I do think language is failing miserably when even the news anchors can't speak correctly.

Are you saying that Facebook is a sign of the end of Western civilisation?! (The previous sentence was somewhat facetious.) But seriously, I definitely do fear for the fate of the English language, writing, reading, communicating. It certainly doesn't seem like evolution when so many people can't write legibly or properly spell out a decent sentence. Spoken like a snob, I suppose...

No I'm just being an old fogey. Being a double English/History major, I get irritated at all the mistakes people make especially when it is their job. And don't get me started on college athletes....

(I meant myself with the snob comment.) So I'm a younger fogey? I get irritated with those kinds of mistakes, too! People whose job it is to communicate specific information, yet they cannot write a simple memo without massive spelling and punctuation mistakes make me scream. So do people who can't say something without replacing the nouns and adjectives with "y'know..." (e.g., athletes).
I confess there are some e-mail/text abbreviations I like, though, including BTW, OMG, and (my favourite) TMI. But I use them informally with friends and family only.

I sent one of my younger sisters, still middle age, a message saying "TYTYTYTYTYTYTY" and she wrote back asking if my computer was broken! I guess the gov. started it with all the acronyms and we have shortened everything too in this fast-paced world; i.e. ppl, lol, imo. And online gaming hasn't helped either. Consider me guilty there.

"TY"? "Thank you"?

Yup. (See what happens when you assume????) Sorry

I haven't gotten much into Facebook... It was my teen daughter who finally talked me into opening an account and it seemed a good way to keep up to date with family. However, I did get some requests for friends (mostly old acquaintances) that I just didn't "friend" at all which I thought would be better than "unfriending" them later. I have nothing against them but just wanted to keep it mostly family-oriented, at least for now.

With so much communication being electronic, I have found a sprinkling of acronyms helpful, as long as they are not too obscure. I mostly use LOL, BTW or IMO, and like to abbreviate some: esp for especially. It's all very helpful when texting with my kids (2 in their teens and 2 in their twenties). TMI: oddly, we use this more out loud than texting.

TTYL ;)

I say some of those acronyms, too. Somehow, they're fun to say.
I much prefer Goodreads to Facebook. It seems like most of the stuff on Facebook is people I knew in school that I haven't talked to in 15 or 20 years, or family members who refuse to communicate any other way, bragging about their spouses and children. As I can't 'brag back' in those areas, it's not much of a conversation. I know a couple of people who are into the Facebook games, and one encouraged me to sign up for Scrabble, but I haven't done it yet.