After your hangover subsides on New Year’s Day — assuming it subsides, and assuming you are a journalist attempting to take the day off — your thoughts nevertheless turn to the events of the year just ended:
2024.
A year that you somehow survived, against all odds.
Nothing newsworthy happens during the last week of December and the first week of January, but your editor still expects a column on January 2. (Yes, he knows about the hangover, and that January 1 is a paid holiday for most employees working in most businesses.) On the bright side, you have the entire 2024 year to cull for material. If you can remember any of it.
And luckily, I can remember some of it. Mostly, I remember the parts that might be better left forgotten. Like, candidate Donald Trump swaying on stage for 39 minutes to a recorded playlist, during a Pennsylvania ‘town hall’… with his co-host, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem.
“Let’s not do any more questions. Let’s just listen to music,” Trump said, explaining the change of plans. “Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?”
I completely agree. Who the hell wants to hear questions? I certainly don’t. I heard enough questions when I was married to last me a lifetime.
My complaint, however, is with his music choices. Yes, I love ‘YMCA’ by the Village People… and ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ by Sinéad O’Connor is a perennial favorite… but I was hoping to hear ABBA’s ‘Money Money Money’.
Money, money, money
Always sunny
In the rich man’s world…
Which brings us to the ‘Word of the Year’ according to the Oxford University Press.
“Brain rot”
(Actually, that’s two words. Obviously, the folks behind the Oxford ‘Word of the Year’ are more talented at language arts than at math. But speaking as a writer, I think math is overrated, looking at the whole picture.)
In their December 2 announcement, Oxford defined “brain rot” as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Also: something characterized as likely to lead to such deterioration…”
The choice was based on voting by 37,000 people who had nothing better to do.
I’m not completely happy with the implication that “online content” has something to do with brain rot, considering my line of work. We should note that the first recorded use the the phrase occurred in 1854, in the then-popular book Walden by Henry David Thoreau, a person not known for his exposure to “online content”.
Thoreau wrote:
While England endeavours to cure the potato rot, will not any endeavour to cure the brain-rot – which prevails so much more widely and fatally?
So, apparently not a new disease, although possibly one imported from England, where it prevailed widely in 1854.
But I doubt anyone is shocked to learn that the disease continued, in 2024, to find victims — in Great Britain and in the U.S. at a rate that drove it to the top of the ‘Word of the Year’ heap.
The other candidates for the 2024 Oxford Word of the Year:
demure (adj.): Of a person: reserved or restrained in appearance or behavior. Of clothing: not showy, ostentatious, or overly revealing.
dynamic pricing (n.): The practice of varying the price for a product or service to reflect changing market conditions; in particular, the charging of a higher price at a time of greater demand.
lore (n.): A body of (supposed) facts, background information, and anecdotes relating to someone or something, regarded as knowledge required for full understanding or informed discussion of the subject in question.
romantasy (n.): A genre of fiction combining elements of romantic fiction and fantasy, typically featuring themes of magic, the supernatural, or adventure alongside a central romantic storyline.
slop (n.): Art, writing, or other content generated using artificial intelligence, shared and distributed online in an indiscriminate or intrusive way, and characterized as being of low quality, inauthentic, or inaccurate.
I’m tickled pink that the people voting in the Oxford poll did not choose, ‘slop’.
Although, from what I can tell, it’s even more common that brain rot.
Maybe it will be next year’s word?