7 things that annoy the shit out of this newspaper columnist

We think it’s cute when people get grumpy about technology — it’s like listening to your lolo complain about the ills of colored television.

And so we’d like to thank grizzled editor (his words, not ours) Chin Wong of Manila Standard Today for this amusing weekly column where he rants about the the digital age in his column called, erm, Digital Life. 

Here are seven things that annoy Lolo Chin, in his own words:

1. Trending. [This] suggests that a topic is hot, and that a lot of people on social networks are keenly interested in saying something or reading more about it. The next time some know-it-all tells you something is trending, ask him what is the statistical basis for this assessment.

2. Netizens. Which brings me to another term that should immediately set off alarm bells anytime you read it in a news article — netizens. A number of traditional dictionaries have already accepted the word, a combination of Internet and citizen, to mean a frequent user of the Internet. But because the second half of the word comes from “citizen,” the term suggests privileges, responsibilities and allegiance to a state that have no meaningful equivalent in the online world. What’s wrong with just writing “Internet users”?

3. Going viral“Another trite and overused term…refers to content that becomes extremely popular on the Internet, being passed from one user to another through e-mail or social networking sites, much like an organic virus might spread. Nowadays, however, any video that’s drawn more than a few viewers on YouTube is said to have gone viral. 

4. Truncated words. Also on my list of abused words are “app,” “fail” (as in “epic fail”), “bot,” and other truncated words. What’s wrong with writing “application,” “failure,” or “robot”? When we short our words, we run the risk of losing their mean and that can be a real annoy.

5. Combined words. There is danger going the other way, too, when we combine words to create ugly terms like “webinar,” “infographic,” and “infomercial.”

6. Acronyms. Chatroom acronyms such as YOLO, OMG, ROTLF and LMAO might have their place in instant messages, but they look ridiculous in print and sound silly when spoken. After all, why not actually laugh out loud instead of saying “LOL”?

7. Hashtags. Another silly practice these days is to attach a hashtag to everything to make it look cool. Hashtags are used in Twitter to denote a keyword or topic. Used indiscriminately, #itissimplyidiotic.

Here’s something for you, Lolo Chin.

– 30 – 

Photo: Butler University



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