Apparently I'm slightly late to this fresh, new run at cultural degradation:
BOSTON (Reuters) - "w00t," an expression of joy coined by online gamers, was crowned word of the year on Tuesday by the publisher of a leading U.S. dictionary.
Massachusetts-based Merriam-Webster Inc. said "w00t" -- typically spelled with two zeros -- reflects a new direction in the American language led by a generation raised on video games and cell phone text-messaging.
It's like saying "yay," the dictionary said.
"It could be after a triumph or for no reason at all," Merriam-Webster said.
Well at least it -- that 'word' -- operates in keeping with the Prime Directive of the contemporary ethos: if you have no petty accomplishments to celebrate, celebrate anyway. But Merriam-Webster President John Morse sounds the death knell thus: "This is simply a different and more efficient way of representing the alphabetical character."
You ass. Let me be blunt. Online gamers are not cool people. Making up the word 'w00t' is not cool. Making up the word 'w00t' is like being in eighth grade and writing the word 'WaReZ' on stuff. This should not be emulated in the real world, much less actively recruited into it. A more efficient way of representing the alphabet is texting '4' instead of 'four', or '2moro' instead of 'tomorrow'. That's cool. What's not cool is writing in public correspondence or a class paper -- because that's what you do with words -- the phrase h0LLaZ @ ya 8itChz. That's hella stupid. That's not 'simply a different' form of dictionary English -- at least not until Merriam-Webster gets its trite, self-abasing hands on it. What real word are you more efficiently representing with the letters 'w00t'? Woot? Woughte? Maybe some online gamer can school me in my own language, since obviously I'm stuck in the Dark Ages reading musty classics of cramped, uninventive diction like Finnegan's Wake.
Ultimately, I should take it easy on John Morse. Clearly, this is really nothing more than a stunt to remind people there are dictionaries, just as Time magazine's naming the person of the year You was a stunt to remind people there was Time magazine. But quite like a library, you are to come to the dictionary, not the dictionary to you, and if people don't want to do that anymore because they can invent jabbering little illiterate e-troglodyte languages to transcribe their virtual grunts of satisfaction, scr00 'em.
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