Words I Hate: Blog

Writing these things is a big part of what I do for a living (not this one, of course, you ingrates don't click shit).  Having to use the word is probably a big part of why I hate it so much.  Nonetheless, my reasons for disliking it are plentiful.  It's not just that I feel like such an asshole saying or typing the word.  I mean, the fact that I hate feeling like I'm trying to sound like some hipster Myspace youth in tight pants but only succeeding in sounding like a douchey frat guy who wants to be sensitive, well, if that were my reason, that would just be childish.  So I must have some better reasons, right?  Right.  So, obviously, I've got some sort of higher-order complaints with it.

It's a contrived word.  Somewhere, someone along the way thought that it would be cute to shorten "weblog" to just "blog."  That's fine, but then suddenly a few people with some sort of media-related superpowers latched onto this word as "the next new hip thing" and started forcing it down our throats, right when we sort of needed to decide organically what these new things would be called (funny how "website" seems to work just fine. . . Then again, they probably would have made us start calling those "bsites").  The problem is that it didn't develop organically, as these things should with language, but was rather decided by. . . . some guy.  Bah.

The word itself just sounds unpleasant, too.  Blog.  Like lug or blurg or bug or blech or belch or blah.  Something about these sounds doesn't work well to convey the meaning that we're going for, giving us a sort of gummy, sticky sound where there should be crispness and interest.  Then again, this sort of incongruity between sound and meaning is, I suppose, what happens when we try to force language to develop rather than letting it happen organically.  That'll teach you.

Comments

[the force]

So why not call it simply your "journal"?

[Ncq]

You sort of described how the word did develop organically. "Some guy" used it at some point, other people though it sounded cool, and begun to use it themselves. From that point, it spread naturally into our everyday language usage. Nobody really forced people to use it or ran a campaign to push people to use the word. It spread and became accepted on its own. Many words enter language this way; it's perfectly natural.

To eliminate it would be more artificial than it's introduction.

Attempts at artificially forcing people to speak a certain way tend to fail, because, as you said, language develops "organically". To advocate the elimination of a word that has already entered our daily vocabulary would be attempting to introduce an artificial change.

I don't see a problem with the word.

[polito]

I wholeheartedly agree that the abomination "blog" is entirely repulsive and abhorrent to everyday language.

I can't put into words just how much I detest the expression except to say this: If time travel were possible I'd go back to handle (read: throttle) the problem (read: person) before it got used.

[She_Assassin]

Let's face it...blog sounds like bog. Not at all attractive.