It has come to our attention that in this fast-paced electronic age, many words have completely different meanings then they once did. This is reminiscent of “lingo” developed in the 1960’s, when “cool” stopped specifying a temperature and started specifying an attitude and “groovy” became a term for an open-minded person rather than a poorly made cabinet.
Leaving aside Hip-Hop culture, which at this point employs a lexicon completely unrelated to English, we would like to focus on translating some of the more common “altered” words so as to avoid any potentially disastrous confusion on the part of our members.
“Friend” – This term, which used to imply someone with whom you had an intimate relationship based on mutual trust and understanding, now means potentially any person in the world ever, as long as you are in contact with them via an electronic networking tool such as Myspace or Facebook. By eliminating stumbling blocks such as intimacy, acquaintance, correspondence and dialogue we have drastically streamlined the process of friendship. While our grandparents couldn’t hope to have more than a dozen friends, we may have hundreds of thousands of friends at once, which serves to boost self-esteem while saving time.
NOTE: “Friend” has also become a verb, implying the act of contacting someone online, often the first step in a sexual conquest.
Examples:
“I friended her the other night so I think pretty soon we’re gonna do it.”
“Oh yeah I friended the shit out of that bitch.”
“I friended all over her face.”