Language is our primary weapon in the ceaseless conflict that is modern life. Today we examine two words that are perfectly terrible reflections of our time: wow and platisher.

problematic (noun, adjective) You're at work, looking at the Internet instead of doing tasks related to your employment. Something is bothering you! Did a celebrity comment on the issue of race? What is up with Katy Perry being so old? Why is "everyone" on Twitter mentioning a #longread that just didn't do anything…

beard: Ancient arcane term for a gay person's pretend heterosexual partner. Since the legal establishment of gay marriage, refers exclusively to lovingly tended long whiskers worn by urban men working in offices.

Every year Lake Superior State University bans a bunch of words and phrases from the English language for good. They just released their list today and, I must say, it is amazing. Oh wait, we can't say "amazing" anymore.

In your finally Friday media column: the search for proper media jargon, a Tina Brown-to-Newsweek rumor, the NYT poaches a WaPo reporter, and Katie Couric's future, hinted at.

"We didn't attempt to silence Violet. We unpublished our own work." That's how the geek culture blog Boing Boing defended their decision to delete every post referring to sex writer Violet Blue for no given reason. The team's refusal to explain further turned this obscure event into a giant blog fight: because a…