You Read It Here First

September 26, 2019
Posted by Jay Livingston

Today, the Facebook group Nerds With Vaginas posted this:

(Note the number of Likes, Comments, and Shares the post had already gotten in the first five hours.)

Four years ago, in a blogpost about swear words (here), I cited the work of Jack Grieve, who had been using Twitter data to discover regional and historical variations. Here is the final paragraph of that post.

You can find maps for all your favorite words at Grieve’s Website (here), where you can also find out what words are trending (as we now say) on Twitter. (“Unbothered” is spreading from the South, and “fuckboy” is rising). Other words are on the way down (untrending?). If you’re holding “YOLO” futures, sell them now before it’s too late. [Emphasis added.]