Two pieces of news, from wildly disparate parts of my life, but both with Mormon connections.
First, a gay porn sale from the Lucas studios, from their MormonBoyz.com specialty site: tons of deeply transgressive LDS mansex, framed as daddy-son sex to boot; also with lots of images of men kissing, which I happen to find very satisfying.
Second, the news from Salt Lake City, where the 92nd annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America is drawing to a close today — an event that brings with it meetings of sister societies, among them the American Dialect Society, sponsor of an annual Word of the Year competition, a kind of public lexicographic circus with voting from the floor. The overall WOTY winner this year, announced on the 5th: fake news, in two different senses. Details on this and the other winners below.
Putting things in context. For part 1, this kiss from MormonBoyz:
(#1) The full image, which is decidedly X-rated and not for kids or the sexually modest, can be viewed here
For Part 2, this view of the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City:
(#2) According to their site: “the largest and only AAA-rated 5-diamond hotel in Salt Lake City”
Your mental exercise is to reconcile the two images.
Part 1: Kiss me, Brigham! The MormonBoyz videos show older men engaged in sex with younger men, ostensibly during LDS missions for the younger men. Five kisses extracted from this material, only one of them (#4 below, a kiss in the missionary position) flirting with the X-line:
(#3)
(#4)
(#5)
(#6)
(#7)
Part 2: WOTY time. Meanwhile, at the elegant hotel, the LSA has been meeting
concurrently with the American Dialect Society (ADS), American Name Society (ANS), North American Association for the History of the Language Sciences (NAAHoLS), Society for Computation in Linguistics (SCiL), Society for Pidgin and Creole Linguistics (SPCL), and the Society for the Study of the Indigenous Languages of the Americas (SSILA)
and the ADS has issued a press release:
Grand America Hotel, Salt Lake City — Jan. 5 — In its 28th annual words of the year vote, the American Dialect Society voted for fake news as the Word of the Year for 2017. Defined in two ways, “disinformation or falsehoods presented as real news” and “actual news that is claimed to be untrue,” fake news was selected as best representing the public discourse and preoccupations of the past year.
… Fake news was first considered by the American Dialect Society a year ago in the voting for the 2016 Word of the Year, but at the time its meaning was restricted to fictional or embellished stories presented as authentic news, disseminated for financial gain or for propagandistic purposes. In 2017, however, the meaning of fake news shifted and expanded, in large part due to its repeated use by [REDACTED].
“When [REDACTED] latched on to fake news early in 2017, he often used it as a rhetorical bludgeon to disparage any news report that he happened to disagree with,” said Ben Zimmer, chair of the American Dialect Society’s New Words Committee and language columnist for the Wall Street Journal. “That obscured the earlier use of fake news for misinformation or disinformation spread online, as was seen on social media during the 2016 presidential campaign.”
“[REDACTED]’s version of fake news became a catchphrase among the president’s supporters, seeking to expose biases in mainstream media,” Zimmer continued. “But it also developed more ironic uses, and it spread to speakers of all ages as a sarcastic putdown.”
… Word of the Year is interpreted in its broader sense as “vocabulary item”—not just words but phrases. The words or phrases do not have to be brand-new, but they have to be newly prominent or notable in the past year.
Winners in other categories:
Political Word of the Year: take a knee: Kneel in protest, especially during a time when others are standing.
Digital Word of the Year: shitpost: Posting of worthless or irrelevant online content intended to derail a conversation or to provoke others
Slang/Informal Word of the Year: wypipo: Humorous phonetic spelling of “white people” used to flag white privilege, cluelessness, or absurdity.
Most Useful: die by suicide: A variant of “to commit suicide” that does not suggest a criminal act.
Most Likely to Succeed: fake news: 1. Disinformation or falsehoods presented as real news. 2. actual news that is claimed to be untrue.
Most Creative: broflake: Man or boy who lacks resilience or coping skills in the face of disagreements or setbacks.
Euphemism of the Year: alternative facts: Contrary information that matches one’s preferred narrative or interpretation of events.
WTF Word of the Year: covfefe: A (probably) mistyped word of unknown meaning used in a [REDACTED] tweet.
Hashtag of the Year: #MeToo: Indication by women that they have experienced sexual harassment or assault.
Emoji of the Year: woman with head scarf or hijab:
(#8)
Bonus: the “two men kissing” emoji (not in the ADS running this year): 👨❤️💋👨
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