Shel Holtz has had enough with people whining about the use of "blogosphere" to describe the universe of people who write blogs, and their collected output.
His words of advice to me and others who, like me, whine:
Oh, please. Give it up. Blog, blogosphere, podcasting...they’ve all reached the plateau of common usage. This is what these things are called and all the whining and bitching in the world won’t change it . . . . Folks, you’re battling a lost cause, and if you don’t call it the blogosphere, nobody will know what the hell you’re talking about. Just for God’s sake get over yourselves.
What other words have entered the realm of common usage that you wish hadn’t but you use anyway?
Here's my response:
Shel:
For the record, I have nothing against defining the blog universe as a place that has spherical qualities, it's the "o" that I find embarrassing. I thought the porn industry was the one bringing The Big O to the Internet, not bloggers.
Yes, I know everyone calls it the blog-o-sphere, and there's no turning back time. If I choose to be idiosyncratic and mock the use of the word, it's my reminder to those few people who care that it's very hard to say blog-o-sphere to a roomful of people and not sound like a dork.
If I have to do some syntactical gymnastics to keep my references to the blog-o-sphere to a minimum, that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. (Of course, I've already proven myself to be a dork by writing about this topic, so I guess I should give up and embrace my inner dork.)
Well said that man. I use it, but i resent having too, and yes, i feel like a dork everytime i have to say it...
There is a worrying trend of "trend jumping" out there, anything even remotely resembling a bandwagon is being leapt on by the prositutes of PR in the ahem.. blogospher in the hope that Scoble might link to them. Its rather pathetic.
Transparency is one such term, obcenely over and misused. I've even seen bloggers bragging about their site stats in the name of transparency..
Really, this whole thing resembles a chimpanzees tea party more than anything that could be remotely linked to intelligent distributed convesation more often than not...
Posted by: Nick W | March 23, 2005 at 06:26 AM
I don't like it either, Eric; that's my point. The genie's out of the bottle, the train has left the station. "Cyberspace" sounded the same way in 1993; today nobody gives it a thought.
By the way, I honestly hadn't read any of your posts on the topic. They were all on non-communication blogs.
I wonder how flight attendants feel when they tell you to "deplane." Do I decar? Debus? Detrain? But try to make the word go away.
I'm also reminded of Joan Didion's excellent essay in "The White Album" in which she savaged the women's rights movement for minimalizing itself by expending resources in an effort to get people to say "person-hole cover" instead of "manhole cover." With all the substantive issues out there, what did this effort do except make the movement look petty?
It's just time to move on.
Posted by: Shel Holtz | March 23, 2005 at 12:36 PM
LOL. I've actually been meaning to get a bit more serious about some of my topics and do less trend jumping as you put it, Nick. I just couldn't resist taking one last kick at "blogosphere" before I give up and adopt it like everyone else.
However, if I use the word as often as I've used "cyberspace" in the past 12 years, then I'll be safe. I don't think I've mentioned cyberspace more than a couple of times when I wasn't being ironic.
Yes, Shel, I concede that blogosphere and a whole bunch of other questionable words have entered the common parlance. I may go out of my way not to use words that make me gag, but I probably won't be doing any more loud protesting (some might call it whining!) either.
Your fellow blogospherian,
Eric
Posted by: Eric E | March 23, 2005 at 07:36 PM