The use of words, acronyms and other expressions of primarily technological origin in everyday speech or conversation without any trace of irony. For example:
An expression of joy and/or appreciation communicated via the medium of Twitter.
This word is a compression of the words ‘tweet’, which is a short message or status update on Twitter, and ‘w00t’, which is itself a compression of the words ‘wow’ and ‘loot!’ as used by Dungeons and Dragons players and Unix hackers.
The term may be used explicitly, as illustrated by the following exchange:
Tweet A: “Did you know that you can now follow updates to The Blogtionary via Twitter @theblogtionary?”
Tweet B: “Twoot!”
or descriptively, as might be used to capture the spirit of the following tweet:
Tweet C: “Yay, I just passed my driving test!”
Variant forms include tweet-twoo, which may be used as a sort of appreciative wolf-whistle, and twootle, which is a small or speculative twoot.
Gratuitous images of friends and acquaintances assuming poses of fake intimacy and pleasure that are circulated via Facebook and/or other social networking sites. Often enjoyed during the small hours of the morning whilst hunched over a computer or laptop in a darkened room in a semi-meditative state—an activity commonly referred to as ‘Facebook stalking’.
Friends porn may be sub-divided into two basic categories: soft and hard-core. The former category usually features crowds of random strangers engaged in everyday social activities, such as dancing, drinking, travelling, and so on, the enjoyment of which is generally considered to be relatively healthy and harmless. The latter may more explicit and disturbing, featuring random and inexplicable uses of hands, tongues and other body parts in simulated sexual and/or other pleasurable acts whilst remaining fully clothed in the company of one’s peers.
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An ingenious device that makes everything sound much closer than it really is.
Originally developed by NASA for the Apollo moon landings (though later scrapped) so that astronauts could communicate with one another through the rarefied lunar atmosphere, ear binoculars work on the little known principle of hyper-synoptic trans-waveform resonance. This not only increases the overall amplitude of sound waveforms, and therefore their volume, but enables the listener to focus in upon particular sounds almost irrespective of distance.
The same technique has enabled scientists to catalogue and enjoy a wide variety of hitherto undiscovered sounds, such as the virtually inaudible pitter-patter of centipedes’ feet, the delicate pre-mitosial song of the E.coli bacterium as it prepares to mount a major urinary tract infection (UTI), and the distinctive twang of a splitting hair. As one prominent scientist remarked, “the sounds of the micro-world can more accurately be described not so much as beautiful music, but as an ungodly racket that I’d be quite happy never to hear again so long as I goddamn live.” He was later discovered to have been suffering from an incredibly subtle form of tone-deafness that has been known to accompany prolonged periods of ear binocular usage.
Any highly desirable or luxury consumer item that, despite having no actual need or use for whatsoever, nevertheless suddenly becomes something that you must have and can no longer contemplate living without.
Popular examples of lustjunk include luxury sports cars, certain items of Ikea furniture, and just about anything made by Apple Computer. People have been known to go to extraordinarily lengths to own particular items of lustjunk, including borrowing large sums of money, criminal acts, and the sale, exchange or hiring out of body parts and/or immediate family members to raise the necessary capital.
Feelings that range from moderate frustration to intense anger and hatred aroused as a result of using an automated touch-tone telephone customer support system.
Symptoms of telephone rage include yelling down the phone at what is clearly a pre-recorded message, incapable of understanding anything you say or do, blatant non-cooperation with the specified instructions, such as entering ‘000000’ in place of your date of birth in the hope that it might crash the system, and randomly pressing buttons on the telephone handset in a vain effort to try and get through to a real human being who might actually be able to help you with your query.
A person who has entered the digital age without compromising their carefully thought out design sensibilities or, more precisely, any member of the cult of Mac.
Podlings may be recognised by their distinctive white earphones, and by their uncanny ability to turn into a black silhouette dancing uncontrollably against a brightly coloured background more or less at will.
A humorous and/or irreverent dictionary in the form of a weblog—or ‘blog’ as it is more commonly known—to give voice to the author’s personal observations, obsessions, and general downright silliness. The principal aim of a blogtionary is to narrow the gap between the large number of widely shared and understood experiences on the one hand, and the lack of any definitive well documented terminology for those experiences on the other.
For more details about this particular blogtionary, please click here.
The practice of steeping oneself in an artificial, virtual or otherwise protected environment in an attempt to escape the harshness, rigours and general unpleasantness of the real world.
Blogging, watching TV or reading fiction, most types of spectator sport and entertainment, mathematics, computer programming, organised religion and alcoholism are all forms of reality denial to varying degrees, as is locking oneself in a cupboard and refusing to come out until all the bad people have gone away.
The rush of joy and excitement that is experienced upon realising that one’s own web site (blog, newsgroup entry, etc.) appears as the number one result of a simple Google web search.
Not entirely dissimilar to—although generally much less messy than—masturbation.
The unpleasant lurch that one experiences in the pit of one’s stomach upon realising that information made freely available through the Internet (web site, blog, etc.) may have unintended and potentially disastrous consequences (emotional distress, estrangement or, in extreme cases, losing one’s job or indeed life) should it be read by a member of one’s immediate family, boss, teacher, spouse, work colleagues, etc.
Often characterised by a rapid mental scanning of all pertinent information in order to calculate whether it is likely to offend, upset or alienate the person you are talking to who has just said ‘I had a look at your web site the other day…’ whilst simultaneously attempting to determine whether they have read, understood and/or forwarded copies to the relevant authorities.
[My only personal experience of this to date was when I realised that I had inadvertently announced my intention to quit my job and study at university before discussing it first with my employers. Sorry about that Leigh, if you're reading this! On realising this, I hastily deleted all references to my personal web site from the company Intranet and made amends at the earliest opportunity. Oh, and there was another time when I went to see one of my university lecturers. Yes, well, OK it's happened a few times now… — Ed.]
Cf. ‘virtual freefall’ in which the individual gains a new sense of purpose and identity from exposing their innermost thoughts and personal idiosyncrasies in a public forum. Also known as open source living.
The vague feeling of uneasiness one gets with knowing that somebody else has access to one’s Internet bookmarks ant/or browse history, regardless of whether one has actually been looking at inappropriate content or not.
Many Internet browsers now feature a ‘private browsing’ mode in order to alleviate issues of browse anxiety. However, this does not overcome the related and far more extreme ‘file recovery fear’ that may cause certain individuals to reformat their hard disk with a succession of ones and zeros before selling or handing it on to another family member or loved one.
The practice of recording and publishing minute details and observations about one’s life—often, but not exclusively, online and at excruciating length—for other people to read and comment on when there is no indication (and indeed, possibly every indication to the contrary) that they are even the slightest bit interested.
The equivalent verb is ‘to diarrhise’, and many blogs can be characterised as ‘diarrhies’ for this very reason (although not, I hasten to add, the one you are currently reading, which is of course filled with scintillatingly delightful gobbets of philosophy and information that is of deep interest to every member of man-, woman- and indeed small furry creature-kind).
When you have something you really want to blog about, but for one reason or another due to lack of time, not knowing where to start, or the price of fish, no matter what you do, you just can’t get it out, even though you really, really want to, so much so that it’s actually starting to hurt a little.
Those unfortunate individuals suffering from chronic blogstipation are encouraged to seek medical help and may benefit from taking an ‘e-laxative’™ to ease the passage of thoughts, ideas and—not to put too fine a point on it—all that shit.
