all the words the internet has ruined for me

and why they're problematic, toxic and nuanced

trigger warning: what i’m about to say might be problematic and toxic, but it’s valid. i think we need to normalise setting boundaries before we get cancelled because no one consumes anything with context or nuance anymore in this unprecedented society. maybe i’m a gaslighting narcissist, maybe we’re all just extremely/ terminally/ chronically online.

did that make ANY sense to you? probably not, because i’ve just strung a bunch of words together to prove my following point: that there are a number of words that the internet has totally ruined for me.

like your favourite band t-shirt, these words have been tossed around in the washing machine of the internet so many times that the band’s name has faded beyond recognition, and thus, it’s been retired to a sleeping shirt. i suggest we make these words the sleeping shirt of the internet.

these words, which were once so fresh, so real, so packed with meaning that they perfected a paragraph and carried a caption, have since become futile, used in vain, and make light of those who have had them in their vocabulary for years in order to express their situations or illnesses or experiences. every time i see them in the wild they have the opposite effect of their intention. they don’t add impact or gravity to their sentence anymore, they cheapen it, and my eyes become little glazed donuts, scanning for something fresh.

so, even if they’re doomed to endure the same rinse-and-repeat cycle of their predecessors, meaning that in a few years’ time, i will be sick of the next batch of zeitgeisty words, can we pleeeeeease start using a thesaurus????