‘Maxxing” may be one of our words of the year – sufficient unto the joyless, self-optimising day, dreary as hell – but I’ve been introduced to some fun future contenders. How about “flawnting”? I’ve certainly rolled my eyes at influencers playing “the new parental status game of publicly performing imperfection to signal authenticity” online. I like “lifehoarding”, too – “optimising so hard for longevity that life itself goes unlived”. And which Guardian reader hasn’t experienced “puregatory” (“The plight of trying to live ethically, where even responsible choices feel compromised”)?
These coinages come from Future Words, a book by trend forecasters Rohit Bhargava and Henry Coutinho-Mason that seeks to fill some lexicographical lacunae for describing life in the fretful late 2020s. Out next week, it’s fun, but its list of suggested words conjures a world where life is whatever your devices, data, algorithms and AI decide it is, interspersed with attempts to fight for authentic human connection and experiences. That sounds about right, if depressing (I was also dispirited to discover the part AI played in creating the book – the authors say they “couldn’t have written Future Words without it” – but it makes sense AI would know what it’s doing to us.)
To cheer me up, I’ve been considering what other contemporary concepts we need words for. For a start, I’d like one for the seductive product you’re algorithmically hounded into buying that turns out to be rubbish (“perfect” trousers that feel like wire wool and fall apart within days, say), and one for the 10-minute (two-hour) break you guiltily grant yourself to watch online nonsense you know will rot your brain.
And do we need a word for “gambling on AI going rogue and killing us all by giving up saving and spend, spend, spending” now? Because Business Insider just reported an “AI safety leader” (Nate Soares, the president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute) has stopped saving for retirement for that reason, which is … sobering. Will we even be around to find out if any of these inventions actually enter everyday speech in the next few years? The crap socks I bought online last month certainly won’t last that long.
Emma Beddington is a Guardian columnist