Three years ago today I was posting something on Facebook and accidentally mistyped or the phone autocorrected something from what I typed to the word “hoe” and I got an immediate notice that my post violated community standards. I had the option to ignore the message, delete the post, or change it. What in the world is going on? Big Brother is definitely here. So I guess I can’t post about gardening anymore and having to hoe around the plants to pull out weeds! Is urban slang the official language of social media??? What happened to straight forward English words meaning what they’ve always meant? Changing the meaning of words or interpreting words to mean what you think they mean or what you want them to mean instead of clarifying what someone is actually communicating through questions or reading in context is authoritarian legalism to the Nth degree. We see it in the bias that results from “edited” news reporting everyday. It invites reactionary outrage by one offended by assumed intentions instead of actual statements. We have devolved to linguistic warfare.In the three years since that notice, that has not happened, but I shake my head at “new” words that are added to our vocabulary by the dictionary authorities and the way words meanings are twisted today.
