Warning: more politics than usual this month, although many of the links have have a language-y angle.
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Post-truth is Oxford Dictionaries’ word of the year for 2016. The word, an adjective, means “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”; it rose to prominence this year during the UK’s Brexit vote and the US presidential election. Related: an interview with Oxford English Dictionary editor-in-chief Michael Proffitt on post-truth and secrets of the dictionary trade. (It’s not uncommon, he says, for a new OED lexicographer to be given a “rude word” to define.) Hat tip for both links: Jesse Sheidlower.
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Marketers rethink how to talk to consumers in a post-truth world, where “facts and reason matter less than they expected — a counterintuitive discovery in the age of information.”
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Posted without comment pic.twitter.com/SrVoCpTvtv
— SF Book Club, London (@SFbookclub) November 14, 2016
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“An America where we are all entitled to our own facts is a country where the only difference between cruelty and justice is branding.” Facebook’s fake-news problem and the rise of the postmodern right. (Brian Phillips for MTV.com)
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Rigged, big-league (or was it “bigly”?), deplorables, and more: Ben Zimmer talks to WNYC’s Leonard Lopate about words that shaped the election. (Audio)
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The three tiers in the new "World of Hyatt" loyalty program are "Discoverist," "Explorist," and "Globalist." This is lolzy bad branding.
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) November 16, 2016
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Snowflake, cuckservative, masculinist, and other vocabulary of the white-nationalist “alt-right” movement. I wrote about cuckservative in August 2015.
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From BoingBoing, a generator of defunct (and wholly fictional) computer-company names that you’re sure you can remember. Reload the page to see more. (Hat tip: Anthony Shore.)
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A Christmas ad for Australian grocery chain Aldi features some appalling American intruders.
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You will never be as lazy as whoever named "seaweed"
— Jason Miller (@longwall26) November 10, 2016
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The morning after the election, writes Ben Yagoda, one word summed up the way many of us felt: gutted.
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“Standup routine that oddly captures the feel of nomenclature.” – tweeted by Amanda C. Peterson, who works in verbal branding for Google and knows whereof she speaks.
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Some of the biggest “news” stories of the political season and its aftermath were completely fictional. (Remember “Amish Vote for Donald Trump”?) Meet the guy who wrote them – and who, in an era of newsroom layoffs and shrinking salaries – was making $10,000 a month doing it:
My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time. I think Trump is in the White House because of me. His followers don’t fact-check anything — they’ll post everything, believe anything. His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact. Like, I made that up. I posted a fake ad on Craigslist.
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From 1995, Umberto Eco’s 14 features of eternal fascism. (Via Kottke)
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Now, don't panic, everybody. Things may suck today. They may suck tomorrow. And next month, and the next 4 years. But one day you'll be dead
— Karl the Fag (@KarlTheFag) November 9, 2016
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