Where Does Internet Lingo Go To Die?
I was talking to a friend of mine and he mentioned how he was still friends with his ex but “she’s not in my top 8 or anything.” Top 8? That sounds familiar. Top Chef? No. Top Model? No, it’s not a TV show. It’s a pop culture reference, an ironic pop culture reference. “Top 8.” Hmmm. Oh that’s right… being in some one’s top 8. It’s old Myspace lingo. Remember Myspace, that ancient social network monster?
For those who were never “cool” enough to be a part of the optional site (unlike the socially mandatory Facebook), or you who skipped the heavily spammed and widegitized mess all together; “Top 8″ were the profiles that were linked directly from your site to a chosen 8 friends. (There were originally 8 spaces, which switched to other larger amounts.)
Top 8 was something that made or broke friendships. There were countless parodies on the gravity of putting someone in or taking someone out of a Top 8 slot. It was the equivalent of earning street cred, digitally. In fact, who and what was in your top 8 defined who you were.
But now “Top 8″ and “Myspace Me” are things of the past. They’ve been put in a metaphorical shoe box and filled away into a dark closet. We’ve traded “Top 8″ for links on LinkedIn, or a more strange notion of digital “friending” on Facebook or a even more disturbing term of “following” someone (via Twitter). At least Top 8 was something unique to the site, not adding a new meaning to an existing word.
But only 4 years ago, Top 8 slots were a prize to win on celebrity myspace pages. Top 8 slots were something to fight, bite, cry and vie for. Now, it’s an ironic term to refer to an ancient notion only left for the digital savvy to say, to be, well, savvy.
And while everything has a shelf-life, some catch phrases make a reappearance. And when they do, it says something great and nostalgic about their birth place. But how exactly do they die? Born online, die online and buried in an ironic cemetery, then?
Could the “ironic” and “vintage” usage of a site’s lingo mean it’s old and buried and no longer relevant and current? And in this day, age and digital space, once you lose current status, what’s left?
Image sources: Mtoz’s Flickr, Mynicespace.com, Photobucket,
The Chatham Singers – Juju Claudius (Damaged Goods)
When speaking about clutter, I am not talking about my dorm room (cause God knows that’s clutter-filled), but rather online advertising.
From there, I found digital PR and have been as happy as a clam since then. But since reading Seth Godin’s blog post “