Language is our primary weapon in the ceaseless conflict that is modern life. Today we examine two words that are perfectly terrible reflections of our time: wow and platisher.

wow

When did adults lose the ability to articulate their reactions? Twitter is a "root cause," as they say at think tanks. Wow is surely the most common single word on Twitter that's not an obscenity or misspelled name of a celebrity. It's hard to come up with good words to say or type, and fewer people understand the good words, and many who do understand the good words willfully mistake the intent so they can respond with a weary or disgusted "Wow" on Twitter. Many educated adults have just given up entirely. The response to anything—good, bad, weird, meaningless or vile—is a tired "Wow," usually followed by that most emotionless form of punctuation, the period. And because today's American children are comically stupid and embarrassingly servile, kids see no reason to do anything differently. Millions and millions of children are mouthing the word "Wow" at their phones, right now. Wow is the word of the era, for young and old alike, because the era is terrible.

platisher

What do you call an online publisher that also wants people to create content (for free) using the publisher's platform? As this situation applies to all websites with comments, you could probably call these publishers "website publishers." But that's not stupid enough for the Tech Press, so today we were introduced to the make-believe word platisher, which is apparently a special kind of company that has its employees and contractors and freelancers post things to the Internet, and also lets random strangers post comments or whatever. Don't just be a publisher! Be something that sounds much, much worse ... be a platisher!

We are terrorized by language every day! Word Terrorism keeps you up to date and explains what these insidious terms really mean. Have you been the victim of Word Terrorism? Please file your report in the comments below.