Ista or Ati. Which One Are You?

Are you a fashionista? A technorati? A literati? Or some other -ista or -ati?

I'm finding it hard to keep up with the new terms coming out to describe every little personality or career quirk people have. What is it with coming up with cutesy names to describe niche people? The latest one I read, just today, is blogarati. From the term, I can only assume that it is anyone who posts and/or reads blogs on a regular basis....I guess that makes me one of this elite class...blogarati.

I don't know. The term blogarati sounds a little more pedestrian than fashionista. A little less intelligent than literati. Could the blogarati be the Internet equivalent of trailer trash? If there are Internet catastrophes, could blogs be the first ones to suffer damage, much like it seems tornados hit trailer parks? No! We can't let that happen! This blog must be protected, if only to cut through the muck and mire that makes up a good portion of the Internet and provide you with the truth, plain and simple. No hidden agendas. No ratings grabbing headlines. No bias from so-called 'independent' journalists.

And what of blogs in general? Yes, there's a lot of crap out there. But anyone, even those that are not really tech-savvy, have the opportunity to speak their mind for the world to read, or ignore, as they see fit. How empowering is that? Information is power and the fact that any Joe or Jane off the street has the ability to provide or receive that information, is powerful indeed. The ability to speak one's mind in an open forum, if not informative, is at least cathartic, speaking from experience.

But what of the need to name anything and everything with the suffix -ista or -ati? Is it part of some grand conspiracy? Is it some innate need we all have? Does everyone feel they need to enlarge dictionaries, or add to the popular culture lexicon? Or are we all just being judgmental? Hard to say from where I sit.

To all of this, all I can say is that the people that come up with these kinds of terms are Websterati...or is that Oxfordistas?

Wings Over The World