I love how the internet is both the compost heap of society as well as a pinnacle of human achievement. A database of vast human knowledge, both trivial and important, infinitely easy-to-access. The concept of storing knowledge outside of the body and then having instant access to that knowledge is staggering. It’s almost like a hive-mind, minus the lack of individuality and you know, all that buzzing.
And yet, I see some internet slang and I want to beat someone bloody with a goddamn extra-annotated edition of Mirriam-Webster’s. What the hell, people? Seriously?
For instance, swag. I thought this was either 1) an acronym for Stuff We All Get or Scientifically Wild-Ass Guess or 2) a bastardized form of swagger. It is neither, as it so turns out.
Swag means, according to urban dictionary, (as I did not believe it when I saw it used (poorly) in context)
appearance, style, or the way he or she presents himself or herself (I changed it from “them selves” because that always bothers me grammatically).I’m not one of those blue-blooded British types who say “oh the internet is ruining the English language,” I get that language evolves with the people who speak it.
But swag? Seriously? Swagger is a WORD, people. It ALREADY has a meaning!
to walk with a lofty proud gait, often in an attempt to impress others
We are taking an existing word, cutting it down, and bastardizing it. And giving it a similar, but lobotomized, meaning. Why?
I’m fine with slang. Slang is not abhorrent to me. But even slang has rhyme and reason to it. Abbreviations, using nouns as verbs, there’s all a sort of twisted logic to it.
This is pure idiocy. If people shortened swagger to swag and kept the meaning, I would have less to protest about. But if a word already has a meaning and you are not only changing it, but making it dumber, what the hell’s the point?
I suppose grammarians and lexicons everywhere shuddered at other instances of slang. Like when stupid came to mean great. Or bad meant good. But I can still see the logic there…something is so great it seems stupidly so. Something is so good it goes beyond and crosses back around to bad. But someone’s appearance is so great that they are “swag”…
It’s not like we lack enough words to describe appearance. I just feel like this is the direct result of people not knowing words like swagger and reinventing the wheel, only poorly. Can you imagine people walking around after someone invented the wheel with inventions that were shittier than the wheel?
“Yeah you can go play with your wheel…I’m gonna play with my square. It’s based off of the same great concept only more poorly-thought out and infinitely less useful. Check it out, that square swag!”
I don’t want to live on this planet anymore meme is appropriate here.
