Tuesday, August 05, 2014

Brave New Words

Ever notice that look people get when they've just said "Selfie?"  It's like they've been waiting for an opportunity so long and it feels just so hip and with-it and just like the cool kids at the cool kid's lunchroom table even though people have been taking pictures of themselves for 275 years?  Historians 275 years hence will be able to date articles with reference to the year of the Selfie just as they will mark the moment that "awesome" exploded into hip American English or the "like" outbreak of the 1990's.

I wonder how long saying selfie will require the micro-skit behavior, the little grin and shrug it requires. The requisite tonality of  awesome still persists after more than a decade.

But sure, language has to change and always will change and probably will hereafter be changed by the
Peter Pan syndrome and total disrespect for education that characterizes modern life. I mean who reads literature any more? Who looks anything up in a dictionary?  Not when you can take awesomely impactful selfies and post 'em.  I mean like it never gets old.

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