Like every other New Yorker, I have no idea what's happening around me until it's reported as a trend in the popular press. Like new moms who become absent-minded due to the stress of raising a young child: they're no longer every parent everywhere, but sufferers of the new disease "momnesia." See by adding mom to amnesia, you speak to the larger trend of moms losing interest in everything except their little angel, with the added bonus of reinforcing gender stereotypes about caretakers. And, as two more anecdotal examples followed by a cute coinage will conclusively prove, trend stories grasping at memorability with made-up words and phrases are now themselves a trend.

Until this weekend, I didn't know that thin girls with a thing for booze were actually drunkorexics. Get it? The word combines drunk with anorexic, to imply that these people are in effect, drunk-anorexics, or drunkorexics if you will.

And I like all kinds of music, but I couldn't have known that the rap I enjoy is actually "hipster-hop," music that's "mainstream enough for urban America, weird enough for these young hipsters." The added "ster" to hip-hop explains how a whitey like me could ever listen to Kanye West.

Following the rules of journalism, with those three examples, I've just proved a trend. And to make sure this trend sticks, I've made up a new word: Trendmology. Get it? Trend plus etymology equals trendmology equals reaching for a trend story.