Do recent Internet terms bother you? They seem to bother some. The British polling organization Yougov (site) reportedly found that the most annoying Internet-related term is folksonomy.
Yougov poll
Other irritating terms from the Yougov poll were blogosphere, blog, netiquette, blook (book from a blog, such as Language Log‘s), webinar, vlog (video blog), social networking, cookie, wiki, podcast, avatar, and user-generated content. Yougov polled 2091 adults in June 2007 on behalf of the Lulu Blooker Prize, an award for blooks.
A folksonomy is a “folk taxonomy,” or a classification system done by anyone and without any agreed-upon hierarchy or definitions. Description tags on Flickr photos or Youtube videos are examples. I think it’s an inelegant word and of little use. Even if you’re a huge fan of the collaborative Wikipedia, imagine it with no editorial oversight at all. That’s a folksonomy.
On Youtube some people write sentences that get broken up into single-word tags including the words is or that. I just did a search for “is” on Youtube and got the word is in the titles and descriptions (but seemingly not tags) of 6,110,000 videos. Interestingly, the first video (embedded below) was on Web 2.0, another annoying word for some.
Switched.com poll
Switched is running its own poll of annoying words with Web 2.0, the verb to Google, podcast, internets, as well as the pronunciations “dubdubdub” for www and “earl” for URL (thanks to Jake the outreach person for Switched).
Some of these words just take getting used to, such as wiki, cookie, or even blog. However, I don’t like vlog because “vl-” just isn’t part of English phonology (the system of sounds and sound combinations). I wish it were V-blog. But then again, I can say the Russian name “Vladimir” and “Vlad the Impaler” (the human Dracula), so I guess I’ll get used to that, too.
I don’t like podcast because it makes no sense. Nobody broadcasts to iPods or to any other mp3 player. After the recording is over, the file goes up on a Web site with a syndication feed. Then if you are a subscriber to the feed, the file downloads to your computer. You can then listen to it on your computer. You can also move the file to your player, but you don’t have to.
“Earl” for “U-R-L” doesn’t bother me. I can see it catching on. Actual (approximate) conversation from 1997 or 1998 between a coworker (no, Brits, that’s not “cow-orker”) and me:
Coworker: What’s an earl?
Me: (surprised) It’s like a duke or a count.
Coworker: (laughs) No, U-R-L.
Me: Oh, that’s U-R-L. I think it’s “universal resource locator” [it's actually "uniform"]. It’s an Internet address.
Coworker: The computer has some message in Japanese with “URL” in it.
The message was “URL cannot be displayed” or some such.
I can’t say I’m a fan of “dubdubdub” for “double-u double-u double-u.” I can see that it’s easier to say. The Tonight Show‘s Jay Leno was telling people to send in funny headlines to “ww.nbc.com/tonightshow.” Now he just says “nbc.com/tonightshow” (which for some reason goes to the trouble of redirecting to the longer http://www.nbc.com/The_Tonight_Show_with_Jay_Leno/). However, why are we even bothering putting “www” in URL addresses? It isn’t necessary. Even if we do use “www” in URLs, it will usually get filled in without typing anyway.
On a side note and back to Japan, in Japanese they use the letter W to represent the borrowed word daburu (“double”), such as W chiizubaagaa (“double cheeseburger”).
What Internet words are bothersome to you?