Loyal readers, do you remember how, a couple weeks ago now, I had a post seeking blog specific jargon? Well, I feel comfortable now revealing that the inquiry that prompted that post came from none other than William Safire and it resulted in this article in the New York Times Magaine this weekend.
Well, okay, it wasn’t from Safire directly; it was from one of his researchers. But he (the researcher, that is) did email and leave me a phone voice mail message about this back at the end of January/begining of February, and I obliged with a blog posting trolling for requesting input.
It’s an okay enough piece, but I guess I have two critiques, both of which I suppose are semi-obvious. First, a lot of the terms/jargon in this article seem, well, a bit of a stretch for me. I mean, “moonbats?” “deliciousing?” “blegging?” I dunno…
Second, Safire makes no mention of me nor any of the comments on my post about this. I feel kinda used.
You should be thankful you were left out of that inaccurate mess.
Doesn’t quite know what a meme is (its usage is broader than the net, and practically the same whether it is found on a blog or elsewhere). Doesn’t quite know how to explain what it is to be slashdotted, although there is a peripheral nod to SlashDot. And so on.
What I think happened is, most people that got slammed with the survey, feeling annoyed by the request, fed it crap answers. Safire printed them as though the answers reflected actual usage, whereas a simple googling of the phrases would have been a better research tool.