Excerpt from a poem posted yesterday by Linh Dinh over at his Detainees blog.
To Fisher-Price, a newborn can now be strapped
To a seat, and forced, his head tilted up, to stare
At a relentless screen, with its bright and anxiety-ridden,
Sped-up world, so that his eyes will cloud over and roll
Away from this mind rape. Drooling, he will utter a series
Of terrified near-words, which his iPad-hooked parents
Will interpret as pleasure. Raised in apptivity, kids
Will eschew walking, talking or eating while looking
At their food, or sex that isn’t on demand. Like now.
Hooked on porn and apps, we will not rebel.
The pervasive encroachment of technology from Day One of our lives, and into our language as well. Who doesn't know nowadays what "googling" means? Google seems to have the monopoly on instant google product name recognition here. You don't often hear anyone refer to searching for information on the Internets [sic] as "yahooing" [it just plain sounds funny, and possibly derogatory to yahoos everywhere]--though "scroogling" and "binging" are catching up. The big thing now seems to be apps. You show me your apps, I'll show you mine. Betcha I got more'n you. A not infrequent, non-imaginary conversation. Just sayin'.
I'm a word junkie and the continuing evolution of language that reflects how we relate to trends that morph into obsessives, fascinates me. Being a dinosaur that doesn't even own a cell phone, I'm often chuckled at because I mis-say the terminology. An emerging SpoofLexis tumbles to mind.
[Not to take away from the import of Linh's poem. Writer, poet, photographer, political analyst, he has an acute understanding of what's imploding in our society, culture, environment, economy, and government. He travels the country documenting the "downslide", talking to people the Powers-That-Be have forgotten, sharing their stories on his blog and State of the Union photo series. But he also often 'pokes fun at', and his word "apptivity" in the referenced poem got me thinking about words we shorten or slangify to describe our now times]. So, a few suggested new app words, of an app-lexistical nature:
A Mini AppLexicon
Apptivity – the act of apping
Appify – what you can do once your appinstall gets apptivated
Appadiction – when there’s no app you don't already have
Appalicious – recipes in your Appicubby
Appaholic – one who suffers from extreme appadiction
Appnoxious – physical aversion
to the overappopulation of appaholics
Appless – what you become when your appholder falls down the
toilet
Appageddon – when you discover one of your apps has been secretly monitoring you
Appfullness – when you have so many apps you can’t keep
track of them all
Applack -- when you can't find the app you really really want
Applack -- when you can't find the app you really really want
Appapt – able to app in your sleep
Appfickle – unable to decide which app to appload
Applode – it happens,
when your appware malfunctions
Appatune – appifying a musical appjingle in your apparchive
Appkeep - as opposed to the ones you appchuck
Appalingo – another
name for appspeak
Appalistic – appaddicts who compulsively collect applisties
Appcitis – a condition that sometimes afflicts appaholics
Appicide – when an app self destructs
Appmapnegate – app maps that purposely mislead
Appmobile – the opposite of appinertized
Okay, enough Apologies to avidappers everywhere, from an unappologetic appnisaurus antiquus.
