What did you say?

I’M in Japan, so I thought a little light-hearted diversion might entertain you.

The human brain works by electrons slivering around our gray matter, which, according to Louis de Broglie (a French aristocrat but, more importantly, a 19th century physicist), are particles that travel in waves through our brain. It’s analog thinking. Computers send ones and zeroes, on and off as digital thinking. The two are not compatible, and for us oldies almost impossible to comprehend. We have entered a world that is forcing us to think digitally. It’s unnatural but, it seems, inevitable. What it has done is introduce a lexicon of new words into the English language. IT (information technology, in case you didn’t know) has revolutionized how we speak.

There’s a whole slew of acronyms meant to reduce our writing skills. Actually, who can even write today? Forests are being saved from the paper we no longer so wondrously used to write on (me, with a fountain pen — if you can remember those).

There are things like FYI, TNX, OMG, we even use ourselves. While abbreviations like CU, SRSLY we can guess at. But SLR, NP, OTW, HBD, POV, what on earth are those, we need help. LOL has even been changed from the endearing “lots of love” to “laugh out loud.” But NVN, LMK, what on earth are they? Youngsters can no longer spell, their phone attempts to do it for them — not always to perfection. So what are these new words?

Wi-Fi. Why indeed? And FI? Maybe a shortening of fiasco. Which this stuff certainly is. Foolish idiot is the best I can come up with.

Internet. Apparently, not a net used in some newfangled tennis-related game.

Zoom is what we young men hoped to do in our hotted-up cars, without the cops catching us. Somehow, now it’s a meeting where nobody meets anybody.

Those Clouds used to be fluffy, white things in a pale blue sky. Now it’s a heaven where data goes through heaven’s switchboard.

Telegram. No, it doesn’t arrive at your doorstep by messenger anymore. It’s some strange method of communication by the young. You don’t mail anything today, you “E” or “G” it. Instagram. A telegram a pigeon delivered? Streamer. One of those lovely fluttery ribbons no more. Instead, telling the world what a wonderful creative creature you are because no one else is going to. Viber didn’t exist, and probably shouldn’t now. Meta. Half a word for half a brain.

Twitch. A human body gyrating with emotion. Now, it’s a livestreaming platform for people who play mind-stultifying video games and such. Livestreaming, apparently not a creek full of fish. Streaming, the joyful babbling of a brook no more — maybe full of dead fish?

Infostructure. Bad spelling by cell phone created illiterate people.

But SELfiES? It’s not some strange way of masturbating it seems, but photos with arms fully extended? You need long arms. Why don’t they call it “armies?” Wishful thinking, but maybe by taking “armies” out of the old English language war wouldn’t happen because you couldn’t define it.

GROUfiE. Come on! Groufie? Is it a groupie where the “f” is not the word you think it is.

Then there’s groupie itself, which is not a group that fondles each other. But a group where a selfie photo is taken with a smartphone that contains three or more people smiling mindlessly at that little phone with an impossibly small camera in it (who has a camera these days?).

Photobomb. A terrorist taking a selfie while he blows himself up.

Zoombomb. It’s the photobomb terrorist blowing himself and you up, as someone else zooms in to photograph the event.

Then there’s post-truth. It’s not truth sent by mail. Instead, it’s social media correcting one of their ever so numerous untruths.

Yahoo was celebrating a success you’d achieved, hands in the air. Now it’s a way of someone getting scandalously rich making huge amounts of $$$ by handling conversations people used to have for free.

There was a googly in my day, a term cricketers will understand (but nobody else, look it up). Today, Google is ubiquitous. It can find everything, except the irreplaceable nut dropped on the floor that you can’t find. Asking Google “where is the nut” results in — nothing. Yet, that’s the one thing I want it for.

Cybersecurity. Cyber is a brand-new word of the computer age. Almost anything related to computers applies: cyberbully, cybercrime, cybersmart, even cybersex (do you jointly masturbate from afar?)

Twitter, the wondrous chirping of a bird no more. Tweet has followed it into extinction. The birds have died. A word no doubt derived from twit, a fool. So one fool getting together with another fool.

X. An unknown factor. One fool talking to another unknown fool.

Blog, derived, I’m told, from weblog. Not, it seems, some strange abbreviation of spiders and forests getting together.

Blogger, someone who’s a thoughtless log. Vlogger, a person who’s a virtual log. TikTok. The sound of a lovely old-fashioned clock. But not anymore. It’s self-aggrandizement on video.

Facebook. I’ve faced many books in life. But books facing each other?

Skype, a misspelling of that delightful town in Scotland, Skye? Or perhaps a small long-haired terrier from Skye.

LinkedIn. Is it a Welsh town perhaps? Apps, a newly discovered shortening of applications. Those inquisitorial forms you used to fill in to try and get a job.

Then there’s Apple and Blackberry. In the simple days of old, they were but fruits that were much healthier than what they are today — except for their owners.

Emoji. No, not some never-heard-of-before Indian tribe, but some paintings created by the imagination of a 5-year-old child.

Troll. No longer an evil-tempered ugly dwarf, but now a much less frightening creature that just harasses people online.

Hashtag. It looks like this #. No longer followed by a number, but by names. Replacing the more polite “Mr. ______”

YouTube. The “R” is missing, as is the split into an understandable phrase.

FOMO. I must have missed out on what that meant. (Note to the author of this piece: It means fear of missing out. What you just did.)

Viral. Instead of it being a virus that could kill you, it’s something that spreads rapidly on the internet to kill your thinking processes instead.

Then there’s cell phone. A phone that isolates you in jail. The too-small screened device where all this nonsense lives.

I venture to suggest that as IT through AI takes over our thinking processes, we’ll be the ones that become the artificial intelligence. Incapable of any intelligent, logical thinking. Actually, I can think of some groups and individuals who are already there.

The were indeed the good old days.