Slang

Between the deranged cancellations still roiling online life the Muskification of Twitter, and the undead nature of the Donald Trump-attention economy, there is no shortage of legitimate matters to depress someone like me who cohosts a podcast about internet bullshit. And yet for some reason, I’m fixated on an insignificant issue: LOLflation. The majority of you know what “LOL” stands for: “laughing out loud.” What it’s supposed to mean, when communicated via text or direct message or (less often) email, is: you just wrote something funny enough that I physically laughed. This is touching not just because it’s flattering to make someone laugh, but because it temporarily breaks the spell of the online world.

Have you heard “mid?” The very-online no longer call something “bad” or “dumb” or “crap” or “a shit-festooned barnacle attached to the culture.” They call it “mid.” As in “middling.” In one of the nontroversies that regularly grip Twitter, TMZ reported that someone had said “Jennifer Connelly (in the Nineties) was way more attractive than Zendaya is today — and she was considered pretty mid on the hotness scale.” Legions rose to defend the obviously defensible Nineties hotness of Ms. Connelly: A stupid person is no longer a nitwit, but a “midwit”; the undiscerning eye says Jennifer Connelly’s looks are “mid.” Unlike traditional English slang, which comes from letters to Winston Churchill (“OMG!