Lexicon for the New Zeitgeist

New Lexicon
While listening to popular podcasts, I keep stumbling upon new words that have gained traction in describing this polarized Zeitgeist. I get that. Language evolves to accomodate shifts in culture and society. Finally, I had to ask ChatGPT all these new words that have gained traction in this tumultous social landscape (given the great divide in the forthcoming US presidential election).

ChatGPT and my 2-cents

NeoCon - these are the new conservatives. They represent the global elite who aim for a new world order where they exercise control and dominance. To achieve this, they export war, fund the expansion of NATO, weaponize technology, create division and fragmentation in society, strong-arm heads of state to subscribe to the UN mandate (which is now essentially controlled by the NeoCons). Examples of these people would be all the US presidents after Ronald Reagan and before Donald Trump.
RetCon - stands for retroactive continuity. This is a form of storytelling where you alter the old narrative and put a revision to fit your agenda. This could be diametrically opposed to the original narrative. When you rewrite history, that's a RetCon. A good example is the presidency of the late Ferdinand Marcos Sr. This was characterized by plunder of the Philippine treasury, incarceration of all political opponents and crony capitalism. When his son, BongBong Marcos ran for president, his social media machinery RetConned his late father's presidency as the Golden Years of the country's history. This worked. The young people who weren't born then believed the story. BongBong won the presidency.
Steelmanning - this is when you use an opponent's strongest arguments to have them better represented and to express that you understand where they are coming from. This doesn't mean you agree or support them. You're still out to destroy them but citing their strongest arguments before destroying them.
Strawmanning - the opposite of steelmanning, this is when you want to destroy someone by using his weakest argument against him.
Gaslighting - it's a form of manipulation when you intentionally confuse someone by making him doubt his perception of reality. You can create confusion by denying events, twisting facts, altering what happened, and implying the other person is over-sensitive, over-reacting or paranoid. This causes the victim to have a low self-esteem and question their memory and judgement and become reliant on the deceiver. An example is when a wife sees her husband with another woman. She confronts him at home. He denies it and rebuts that she's making things up, hallucinating and being insecure. He keeps repeating this until the wife begins to think maybe it's her, not him.
Virtue signaling - this is a ploy when you gain social credit by visibly promoting moral correctness for others to see but you don't really practice or believe it. One example is when someone invokes the Lord after every sentence (thereby presenting himself as religious and spiritual), but he doesn't pay his debts, underpays his employees, uses his philantrophy as a tax-leverage and mudslings by gossiping.
Deep fake - this is now part of the mainstream. Deep fake applies to altered digital photo or video that renders it highly realistic, being passed on as real. Deep fake can show a presidential candidate in a compromising sexual episode that never happened. An example is when Trump is shown in a video tap dancing - he can't dance.
Metaverse - Facebook popularized this world meaning an ecosystem merging the physical and the digital world, both virtual and augmented. It may include NFTs that are pure digital tokens but we can trade them for real money.
NFT - stands for non fungible tokens, this is a unique digital asset (could be art, music or video) that exists in the blockchain and central to ownership. People can trade NFTs with real money.
Doomscrolling - this means scrolling down indefinitely on social media even though it causes increasing anxiety. People who are glued to social media are sitting ducks for this.
Deplatforming - this happens when someone is denied use of his social media for his opinion, action or voice. This usually happens when the person goes counter to the narrative of mainstream media. Example: if you say Covid was a planned pandemic to control public behavior and exercise extreme boundaries to which the public can be coerced, you will be deplatformed. If you make your livelihood as a YouTuber, then you lose your income. This is similar to cancel culture - stay in lane or be canceled or deplatformed.
Echo chamber - this is the vicious loop when you are only fed or interact with narratives consistent with your worldview. The social media algorithm gives you what you want and none of the counter narratives. This further reinforces your thinking - you would have no idea how far you've gone into the deep end. Example: you belief in conspiracies so all that's fed in your social media are conspiracy theories. You continue to believe this until you think the whole world order is rigged and that you're being gamed.
Cancel culture - this is mob-thinking where a noisy and aggressive minority cancels or withdraws support from a public figure, company or even a private individual for any perceived wrong-doing, even if it's just non-political correctness. Social media is used to spread this kind of hate. The victim loses his job, his friends and his social standing. What you tweeted 10 years ago, if no longer popular today, can be used to get you canceled.
Woke - it's a way of thinking used in the black community to describe racial inequality in the US. This word has radically evolved to the extremes of any kind of perceived social injustice. This gave rise to gender identity, variable pronouns, and weaponizing a virtue to launch a vitriotic attack. An extreme example is a biological man who now chooses to be a legal woman (with no sex-change operation). He can now participate in an all-woman MMA and beat the living daylights of a biological woman. And if you call this man his former man-name, you go to jail.

Ending Thoughts
This period in human history (short of a civil war) is perhaps one of the most contentious (that, or I'm simply in my echo chamber). Because of the rapid shifts in cultural norms and conventions, language is evolving fast to keep up with current narratives. I'm sure there will be more new words to come out of this Zeitgeist.

--- Gigit (TheLoneRider)
YOGA by Gigit | Learn English | Travel like a Nomad | Donation Bank

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Lexicon for the New Zeitgeist

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