{"id":21,"date":"2009-11-17T14:29:04","date_gmt":"2009-11-17T14:29:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/unimpressed-by-unfriending\/"},"modified":"2009-11-17T14:29:04","modified_gmt":"2009-11-17T14:29:04","slug":"unimpressed-by-unfriending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/language\/unimpressed-by-unfriending\/","title":{"rendered":"Unimpressed with unfriending"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/silverjacket.typepad.com\/.a\/6a00d834236afb53ef0120a6ab6077970b-pi\" style=\"float: left;\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Add-to-friends\" class=\"asset asset-image at-xid-6a00d834236afb53ef0120a6ab6077970b \" src=\"https:\/\/silverjacket.typepad.com\/.a\/6a00d834236afb53ef0120a6ab6077970b-120wi\" style=\"margin: 0px 5px 5px 0px;\" \/><\/a> I realized recently while writing about blogging protocol that spell-checkers do not recognize the word <em>unpublish<\/em>. Odd, I thought at first; it&#39;s an essential part of my vocabulary. Then: Of course it&#39;s not in dictionaries! Before the Internet, unpublishing a piece of writing made about as much sense as undropping an apple. Sure, you could cease publication (Stop the presses!), but once a book or newspaper is out there, it&#39;s out there.&#0160;<\/p>\n<p>I learned today that the New Oxford American Dictionary named <em>unfriend<\/em> its <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.oup.com\/2009\/11\/unfriend\/\" target=\"_blank\">2009 Word of the Year<\/a>.&#0160;<em>Unpublish<\/em> would have served as a less gimmicky option (although maybe gimmickry is part of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.psychologytoday.com\/articles\/200803\/the-job-word-wonk\" target=\"_blank\">the criteria for selection<\/a>).&#0160;<em>Unfriend<\/em> in common parlance is restricted to social networking sites. Further, as a general concept, it&#39;s not novel. Friends have become enemies for millennia.<\/p>\n<p><em>Unpublish<\/em>, on the other hand, signifies one of the largest revolutions in communication since one could publish in the first place. And it&#39;s not restricted to getting back at a Facebook acquaintance who uninvited you to her killer birthday party.<\/p>\n<p>Unfortunately, Web publishing may be headed toward one of the words Oxford considered and rejected: <em>paywall<\/em>. Now there&#39;s a surefire way to unfriend your readership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I realized recently while writing about blogging protocol that spell-checkers do not recognize the word unpublish. Odd, I thought at first; it&#39;s an essential part of my vocabulary. Then: Of course it&#39;s not in dictionaries! Before the Internet, unpublishing a piece of writing made about as much sense as undropping an apple. Sure, you could [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet","category-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/silverjacket.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}