“Selfie”, “twerking” and “hashtag” top 2014 Lake Superior State University List of Banished Words.
LSSU collected suggestions from members of the public for its 39th annual list of words that should be banned.
It recommends the words be “banished from the Queen’s English” because of misuse, overuse or just being useless.
Last year it tried to ban expressions including “double down”, “bucket list” and “YOLO” (You Only Live Once).
For LSSU’s 2014 list, “selfie” received the most nominations.
Selfie, twerking and hashtag top 2014 Lake Superior State University List of Banished Words
The term, which refers to a self-portrait photo, was named word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries only last month.
“Twerk” (a dance move) similarly attracts LSSU’s opprobrium, even though it was also shortlisted by Oxford Dictionaries.
The college’s vocabulists also lamented the rise of “hashtag” and “Twittersphere”, terms from social media that have seeped into everyday speech.
Combination words using variations of -mageddon or -pocalypse, such as “snowpocalypse” or “budgetmageddon”, also ended up on the forbidden list.
It is not clear whether the LSSU’s roster will be a game-changer (an expression LSSU tried to ban in 2009).
Last year’s banned words remain stubbornly resilient in usage. And many of the terms banned in recent years, recorded on the complete list, such as “angst”, “24/7”, “no-brainer” and “spoiler alert”, continue to flourish.
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Facebook announced they would be borrowing a page from Twitter’s manual and introducing hashtags (#) onto its site.
According to The Week, no specific date has been announced for the introduction, but soon Facebook users who click on a word preceded by a hashtag will bring up all Facebook posts tagged with that hashtag.
Hashtags have become an important marker for Twitter. In the past week they were instrumental during the papal conclave and even signalling the Catholic Church’s newest leader #PopeFrancis.
But there’s also a monetary angle towards the hashtag. Films, television shows, and even recording artists often use promoted hashtags on Twitter’s main page.
The Washington Post reports that “Twitter is expected to make about half a billion dollars in advertising revenue this year, according to eMarketer. Facebook generated $4.3 billion last year from advertising”.
This is not the first time that Facebook has looked to Twitter to re-boot its image.
When Facebook launched its subscriber list it certainly seemed to be moving towards a Twitter-specific demographic.
Facebook announced they would be borrowing a page from Twitter’s manual and introducing hashtags onto its site
Similarly, acquiring Instagram last year also showed Facebook was interested in poaching some of Twitter’s camera-ready users who regularly post photos of epic dinners or cute cats.Especially with its mostly-panned redesign, this copycat move is just further proof for critics that Facebook has “jumped the shark”.
The edginess Facebook faced way back when The Social Network movie was still in theaters has seemed to erode in recent months.
Teenagers, in particular, seem vulnerable towards abandoning the social media platform because it’s simply too toxic or even dangerous.
Internet trolling, a relative small staple of Twitter, has become a major factor for teenage bullying on Facebook.
But the numbers for Facebook don’t lie. In October of 2012 the site passed its one billionth user, meaning one of every seven people has a Facebook page.
No timetable has been announced for hashtags on Facebook.
