The new year is when the small university in the town I grew up in publishes its annual list of banished words.

Most of this year’s, although I agree with their choices, are kind of old news. “Rizz” I did NOT know until it showed up in an xword a while back. Rizz? Say what? Okay, yeah, I get it (“chaRISma”, get it?).

“Hack” is on the list because people have been using it (for years) for any old cool thing they’ve figured out. I can still hear a librarian friend say (a few years ago), “It’s a TIP, not a HACK!” I use “hack” but I use it when I have limited (or no) instructions for how to accomplish something technical on my phone/laptop(s) and manage to figure it out. But usually I feel more like I have “bumbled” my way through the issue than “hacked”.

“At the end of the day?” I agree that this is overused but sometimes it’s what works and I’ll probably continue to use it. “It is what it is”, right? A similar phrase that is NOT on the banished word list.

My favorite is “Wait for it”. I am not a connoisseur of social media videos but I occasionally succumb and click on something. Nothing is worse than a video that goes on and on and on with nothing happening. Especially when it displays a “wait for it” label. Either don’t click the “record” button until something is REALLY about to happen or EDIT out the dead stuff before posting.

30 seconds is long enough for even an interesting, action-packed video. My limit for nothing happening is about five seconds. And then there are those TikTok type videos. They are short (by definition, I think?) but often I can’t for the life of me figure out what the hell the video was about.

I have similar rants perculating percolating about written social media posts and comments but I had to drag myself back to work today and this post is long enough.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 2nd, 2024 at 6:43 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.