So I saw that the other day, The American Dialect Society announced that its 2012 Word of the Year is #hashtag.
I guess that’s okay, even if it’s about a year too late—if you were going to go for a Twitter term, I certainly heard “trending” bandied about more in the past twelve months than hashtag, especially around the election. You know, as in “The election night video of Karl Rove melting down on FOX like the Duke brothers at the end of ‘Trading Places’ is trending.” When I hear hashtag, the whole Charlie Sheen meltdown tour thing comes to mind—”hashtag winning,” “hashtag warlock,” “hashtag tiger blood”—which was decidedly a 2011 phenomena.
#whatev.
Rather than sit here and ruminate on what words best summed up 2012, I’m going to do what I do best, which is use my vast intellect to help all you to prepare for the terms that 2013 will be trying to burn into the cultural landscape. (Because I’m a giver, garsh darnit!)
So over the next 12 months be on the lookout for:
buckwild – You may have already seen MTV’s next generation of Jersey Shore—”Buckwild,” featuring a bunch of drunken idiots from West Virginia, but if you haven’t already, it’s only a matter of time before you’re substituting names like Shain and Shae for Snooki and The Situation in your jokes about idiocy and the downfall of American society.
I mean, look at them …
A complete tractor wreck.
royal baby – As the due date for Prince William and Kate Middleton’s first child draws closer—right now, predicted to be in June or July—no doubt you will not be able to turn on a TV or visit a website without some mention of “the royal baby.” Once the child is born, then expect to be bombarded with headlines and links with the child’s name sharing critical news such “Princess Picadilly Pea Pippa Soils First Diaper” or “Prince Eustice Graham Rocketcar Is Circumcised by Bishop of Canterbury.”
cliff deals – Yes, I know we “averted” the fantastically hyped fiscal cliff, but I don’t think the term is going away so easily, especially given that the idiots in Washington didn’t resolve much with the last-minute deal, choosing instead to “kick the can down the road” (a contender for 2012 term of the year, by the way). In the upcoming year, there will be political showdowns aplenty, including on the debt ceiling and budget cuts, so I expect there will be hard-fought, highly debated “cliff deals” to “resolve” these issues as well, i.e., “do more nothing.”
currency war – I heard a bit about this in the news at the end of the year, and it’s just scary and catchy enough that it could become the successor to “fiscal cliff” as something that instantaneously gives newscasters boners. It’s got all the brutal denotations of combat and carnage that might attract viewers’ attention … but with *money*, so it sounds like no one gets hurt, you know, aside from everyone who depends on low gasoline and grocery prices in order to get by day to day.
the drone wars – As the U.S. ratchets up its use of drone aircraft to carry out attacks—because it’s smarter and safer (well, for U.S. soldiers, anyway)—you’ll hear this term more and more often. In fact, it’s already starting to catch on.
tatthletes – Okay, this is a word I’ve made up (as best as I can tell—no hits on Google), so you’re reading it here first! If you watch any sports at all, you know that heavily tattooed athletes—and there are lots of them—seem to be the wave of future, so it’s only a matter of time before someone else puts together “tattoo” and “athlete” and it ends up in the vernacular. I’m betting it’s 2013. You’re welcome!
$ellebrity – The name of a documentary that’s due to come out this Friday, Jan. 11, $ellebirty is the story of how paparazzi will do anything to get the big money celebrity picture that they can sell to tabloids. I expect the term will catch on to define talentless reality-type $ellebrities who will do *anything* to keep their brand in the public consciousness—you know, like engineer a fake marriage or conceive a baby with a has-been entertainer—to keep the $$$ coming in.
tablet – Just how we’ve been inundated the past few years with “smart phones,” I expect that 2013 will mark the beginning of the true Era of The Tablet, which of course, will be replaced by the next hip technology just after I buy one and in time for next year’s holiday shopping season.
genetically modified food – As companies continue to genetically modify food unabated, we’re going to start hearing more critics question the safety and wisdom of the practice. As we’re a nation obsessed with stuffing our maws at any given moment, it might matter to some of those who actually care about what goes into our bodies, a.k.a. about 2% of the U.S. population. Still, the term is just “scary” enough to make headlines, and once the media finds something like that, count on them to hammer away with it. Speaking of …
media jackals – This is what I’m going to start to call unconscionable news outlets who insist on continuing on-site coverage of tragedies long after the actual event is over, sucking the marrow out of every story and every angle despite how detrimental it may be for the long-term recovery of the victims and how it may only incite another situation, all in the name of their own greed, TV ratings and web-traffic benefit. For example, I’m sure you can probably think of a particularly horrific recent event here in Connecticut that media jackals continue to feed on with gleeful zest, even though the town and the families of the victims have repeatedly asked to be left alone now.
It sickens me to the point that my hands are trembling while I type this, but yet I know tomorrow when I check the headlines, there’ll be more stories, invented or otherwise—unless of course, something even more horrible happens. Then the pack will move on to feed off that …