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Merriam-Webster announced the 2023 'Word of the Year,’ and it says a lot about today’s world

Plus, some other terms that made 2023 a historic year.

via TIFF 2022/Wikimedia Commons

Taylor Swift at 2022 Toronto International Film Festival Red Carpet Day 2.

The wordsmiths over at Merriam-Webster have announced their official “Word of the Year for 2023,” they say it’s something we are “thinking about, writing about, aspiring to, and judging more” than ever.

The word is authentic.

According to the dictionary, the most common definitions of authentic are “not false or imitation,” “being true to one's own personality, spirit, or character,” and “worthy of acceptance or belief as conforming to or based on fact.”

Merriam-Webster says the word saw a “substantial increase” in lookups this year. That’s probably because we now live in a world where artificial intelligence, deepfake technology and questionable memes challenge our basic notions of reality.

Authenticity is also seen as a commodity at a time when influencers build their brands on social media while attempting to seamlessly pitch their "favorite" products. These days, the average person scrolls through over 43 feet of content every day on social media. After being exposed to countless images of people, it becomes easier to spot the phonies from those who are being their authentic selves.

“When we look at common threads across the thousands of influencer marketing campaigns we’ve run at The Outloud Group over the last 15 years, the similarity between all of our best-performing brand creator partnerships is pretty simple: true authenticity,” Bradley Hoos, CEO of The Outland Group, a full-service influencer marketing agency, writes in Forbes.

Merriam-Webster adds that authenticity is a trait people strove to find for themselves in 2023.

“Celebrities like singers Lainey Wilson, Sam Smith, and especially Taylor Swift all made headlines in 2023 with statements about seeking their ‘authentic voice’ and ‘authentic self,” Merriam-Webster writes. “Headlines like Three Ways To Tap Into Taylor Swift’s Authenticity And Build An Eras-Like Workplace associate this quality with pop-culture superpower.”

The dictionary also highlighted more words that trended in 2023, including:

“Rizz” — Internet slang for "romantic appeal or charm" (noun) or "to charm, seduce" (verb), popularized by YouTuber Kai Cenat, was added to the dictionary.

“Deepfake” — Altered images or recordings that convincingly misrepresent someone's actions or words, making it hard to distinguish between real and fake.

“Coronation” — The crowning of a new British monarch, King Charles III, sent people to the dictionary’s website to learn the term's meaning.

“Dystopian” — In 2023, “dystopian” was a verb applied to many frightening real-world issues and was used to describe the trend in video games, books and movies depicting a dark future.

“EGOT” — Lookups for “EGOT” spiked in February when Viola Davis won a Grammy for the audiobook version of her memoir. That made her one of the 18 people to become an EGOT, or winner of an Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards.

“X” — When Twitter was rebranded as X on July 23, searches for the term spiked at Merriam-Webster.com, where curious people went to discover more about the mysterious letter.

“Implode” — When a submersible that went to visit the remains of the Titanic in June imploded, the term had a considerable spike as people attempted to learn more about the passengers’ fate.

“Doppelgänger” — This term got hot multiple times in 2023. It trended twice due to stories out of Germany and New York involving the attempted murder or suicide of someone’s lookalike. Further, September saw the release of Naomi Klein’s book, “Doppelgänger: A Trip Into the Mirror World.”

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Don't understand Elon Musk? Here's the theory that makes simple sense of a complicated man.

We may have cracked the code.

via Steve Jurvetson/Flickr

Elon Musk presenting Tesla's fully autonomous future.

Elon Musk is the wealthiest person in human history because he changed how we send money and drive cars. He’s set his sights on taking humans to Mars and just bought Twitter, one of the world’s most powerful platforms for the exchange of ideas.

He’s loved by some, hated by others and, for the most part, a mystery to all. How can someone develop such an incredibly broad, positive vision for humanity while at the same time being able to reduce himself to a Twitter troll?

Three months ago, Musk gave a little insight into his inner world and what drives his decision-making. On August 1, he retweeted a plug for “What We Owe the Future,” a book by the Scottish philosopher and ethicist William MacAskill. “Worth reading. This is a close match for my philosophy,” Musk captioned the retweet.

MacAskill’s book is a call for the embrace of a philosophy known as “longtermism,” which he defines as "the idea that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority of our time." He argues that we can make the future better in two ways, "by averting permanent catastrophes, thereby ensuring civilisation's survival; or by changing civilisation's trajectory to make it better while it lasts ... Broadly, ensuring survival increases the quantity of future life; trajectory changes increase its quality.”


The philosophy strives for the common good by focusing on the long-term goal of humanity’s survival. But long-term good may sometimes come at the expense of the short-term. “Because, the theory goes, giving a poor person a blanket isn’t likely to be as useful for the future of humanity as building a rocket to Mars,” investigative journalist Dave Troy writes on Medium.

Musk’s development of the Tesla fits right into the longtermer view of the world. “The fundamental goodness of Tesla … so like the ‘why’ of Tesla, the relevance, what’s the point of Tesla, comes down to two things: acceleration of sustainable energy and autonomy,” Musk said.

"The acceleration of sustainable energy is fundamental because this is the next potential risk for humanity,” Musk added. “So obviously, that is, by far and away, the most important thing.”

To achieve this goal, Musk had a long-term master plan that was an extremely rare thing in the auto industry. It was more akin to John F. Kennedy’s call to go to the moon than the auto industry's usual vision, which is boxed in by quarter-to-quarter thinking.

Musk’s work to drive to normalize space travel and eventually colonize the moon and Mars fits nicely into the longtermism theory as well. Musk has called interplanetary travel and colonization “life insurance” for the human species. While some focus on the medium-range goal of reducing the planet’s temperature, Musk is focusing on a possible future that may never come to fruition. However, aside from climate change, we may face other cataclysmic events that make Earth unfit for human life such as a meteor or ice age.

So why did Musk buy Twitter? Troy believes that the acquisition fits perfectly into the longtermer worldview.

“The goals are more ideological in nature,” Troy writes. “Musk and his backers believe that the global geopolitical arena was being warped by too much ‘woke’ ideology and censorship, and wanted to fix that by first restoring voices that had previously been silenced—and then implementing technical and algorithmic solutions that allow each user to get the experience they want.”

It appears as though Musk believes that the more regressive forms of progressive ideology work to stifle the spread of ideas and opening up the platform to all voices, regardless of how vile they may be, serves the ultimate goal of broadening human potential. Again, he's sacrificing the short-term problems that stem from hate speech in favor of the potential for good ideas to emerge from the platform without being squelched.

Musk also alludes to longtermism with his stated mission to “extend the light of consciousness.” If Musk believes that humans are the only truly conscious beings in the universe, our demise would effectively extinguish the universe’s knowledge of itself. The universe would be nothing more than the proverbial tree falling in the woods with no one around to hear it.

The thought of the world’s richest, and potentially most powerful, man making world-altering decisions with no rhyme or reason is a scary proposition. It’s woefully inadequate to simply label Musk a visionary or a troll. But if he’s driven by a moral imperative, then we can get a better handle on the objectives behind his work and make sense of him accordingly.

The problem is, given his focus on results that won’t be apparent for generations, will we ever truly understand what he’s about?

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Trevor Noah boils down the problem with the mega-rich using 'unrealized gains' as money

The Daily Show/Teddy Schleifer/Twitter

Trevor Noah's talked about Elon Musk's Twitter purchase in a Between the Scenes segment.

In the era of the mega-billionaire, much has been made of how such gargantuan wealth is built and what kind of taxes on wealth are fair and unfair.

The intricacies of economics can make such questions a bit tricky both practically and ethically, but there's no question that billionaires get enormous tax breaks through loopholes in our tax system and through straight-up tax legislation favoring the wealthy.

For the average American who will never see so much as one percent of a billion dollars in our entire lifetime, wrapping our minds around the financial workings of extreme wealth is like trying to learn another language. The whole "here's how much money I earn, here's what I can write off, here's what I pay in taxes" thing is pretty straightforward, but not how the uber-rich life works. Wealth doesn't equal money in uber-rich-land—except when it does.

In a Between the Scenes moment, Trevor Noah highlighted the weird way billionaire wealth sometimes counts as money and sometimes doesn't in a segment on The Daily Show. In his signature funny-but-smart way, Noah broke down the hypocrisy of billionaires being able to treat their stock shares as money when it comes to buying businesses, but not when it comes to paying taxes.

"I'm by no means an economist, nor am I an expert on stock markets and all things finance-related, but you have to admit, a lot of what happens on Wall Street seems like a scam," he began.

He talked about how the stock market went up one day because of what Chair of the Federal Reserve Jerome Powell said about raising interest rates, then plummeted the next day because of people misinterpreting what he said.

"First of all, how does that happen?" he asked. "How are markets changing because somebody didn't read something or understand—and all of you at the same time? And secondly, why do markets do that?"

He said the nature of stock markets going up and down feels "scammy," and somehow we're supposed to be convinced that the stock market is good for us.

"I get it for people's retirements, and I get it for 401Ks and I understand those aspects of it," he said. "But I've realized there are so many things that are designed in such a slick, scammy way."

He gave Elon Musk's pending purchase of Twitter as an example.

"People argue that you cannot tax billionaires on the shares that they hold in a company because it is an 'unrealized gain," he said. Then he explained that he understands that argument because the shares haven't been sold, so there's no actual money in hand. "So you're worth the money, but you don't have the money…and it could also crash, and then you have nothing, so we can't tax you on it."

"You can't tax the people on a thing because they don't have it, it's just there," he says. "Okay fine."

Then he talked about Elon Musk's offer to buy Twitter, in which Musk put up his shares of Tesla stock as collateral. Noah explained how using his Tesla stock as collateral to get banks and investors to put up the cash for him to borrow to buy Twitter.

"So you can buy a thing based on what you have, yes. But when we want to tax you, you can say 'I don't have it,'" said Noah. "It's such a fun game that billionaires get to play because all their money is in that."

Noah points out how we can't fudge around with the IRS due to where our money is located. "You can't be like, 'That money's in the bank, I don't have that money. What money? It's in the bank. Only when I take it out, then you can tax me. For now, it's in the bank, IRS."

That's not something the IRS would accept.

"But if you have billions in shares, you can then use that as money, to then get more money, but not get taxed on any money, because you 'don't have money.'"

Noah said he's not suggesting that we tax people on unrealized gains.

"But I am saying, it seems to me that you then shouldn't be able to use a thing that's unrealized as collateral," he said.

That last point is worth restating. Noah isn't saying that billionaire wealth in the form of stock shares should be taxed like liquid money. He's questioning whether people should be able to use their untaxed wealth as collateral to get liquid money loans to avoid having to liquidate their own wealth (which they would then have to pay taxes on).

Food for thought. Watch:

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Elon Musk answered a critic on Twitter. He forgot something very important: his fans.

Twitter can be a remarkable tool.

The ability to instantly send a message to your favorite athlete, a movie star, or even the president of the United States still seems like something out of a sci-fi novel. The platform's ubiquity also means you may even get responses from the famous people you reach out to. That's a good thing, right? As we're learning with each passing day, maybe it's not.

When a science writer tweeted criticism of billionaire Elon Musk, she got a personal response from him — and many of his followers.

Writing for The Daily Beast, Erin Biba recounted what happened when she addressed Musk's recent anti-media tirades and his criticism of nanotechnologist Upulie Divisekera being "100% synonymous with BS" on account of her job title.

"A billionaire w/massive power @elonmusk lashed out at two of the most under-attack industries in the country: Journalism and Science. Both are essential for democracy. We should criticize our important institutions, but we shouldn’t threaten their existence w/powerful ignorance," wrote Biba in a series of now deleted tweets. She also noted:

"In this country we deify self-made men who create empires and when they behave irresponsibly we call them 'eccentric' and say the good they have done for the world excuses their bad behavior. But instead we need to make these men look at themselves and recognize the true scope of their power and the RESPONSIBILITY TO HUMANITY that comes with it."

Musk replied, "I have never attacked science. Definitely attacked misleading journalism like yours though."

Now, there's nothing too terrible about his response. In fact, it's the exact kind of reaction any of us might have when facing criticism we feel is unwarranted or unfair. The difference between you, me, and Biba is that Musk has, at the time of this writing, 21.9 million Twitter followers.

A number of those followers took Musk's response to Biba as an invitation to attack her. (She illustrates a number of examples in her story; they're pretty graphic.)

Her story raises a great question about what responsibility people with large followings have to mitigate harassment done in their name, if any.

There are no easy answers here. The truth is that there's a big difference between someone with 20 followers and someone with 20 million followers. Both people can respond to criticism in the exact same way with massively different outcomes.

In response to Biba's article, author Neil Gaiman opened up about some of the lessons in responsibility he's learned in recent years and why "with great power comes great responsibility when you have millions of followers."

Photos by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images and Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

He began with his own experience, saying, "I screwed up very badly almost a decade ago a couple of times, and was called out by friends, before I understood that arguing on Twitter in front of millions of followers can be bullying."

For the next several hours, Gaiman responded to occasional questions about his worldview and what he sees as his social responsibility on social media. "If you set people on other people it's bullying, even if you think you have right on your side," he wrote.

But really it comes down to "not being a dick."

Gaiman brushed off criticism that saying that people with large followings should take extra care not to subject people to an onslaught of harassment was itself a form of censorship, chalking it up to etiquette.

Most importantly, however, he said this: "I learned long ago that there are ways of doing Twitter that discourage followers from 'dogpiling,' and that's an important thing to be aware of when you have many followers. I learned it from doing it wrong, and being called out kindly by friends I respect."

This story could just as well be about any celebrity with a large following or intense fanbase.

This isn't about Elon Musk, specifically, but the way we navigate technology and the new ways it has enabled us to communicate with one another. Again, Musk's response to Biba was fine. Look at it in a vacuum, and it'd be hard to pinpoint the issue beyond a bit of mutual snark. The overwhelming majority of his Twitter followers are also, I'm sure, good people who don't harass others. But if even just one out of every 1,000 followers is the type of overzealous user who views criticism of Musk as something they need to personally address, that still amounts to nearly 22,000 people.

[rebelmouse-image 19469695 dam="1" original_size="750x397" caption="After a writer tweeted "Hey has @elonmusk denounced his antisemitic followers yet or is he still yelling at scientists?" he received a number of threatening images." expand=1]After a writer tweeted "Hey has @elonmusk denounced his antisemitic followers yet or is he still yelling at scientists?" he received a number of threatening images.

This issue plays out all the time and is often framed in a way that suggests the celebrity has cultivated a uniquely toxic fanbase, but that's not true. The issue — whether discussing fans of Elon Musk, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, or anyone else — is that all it takes to completely ruin someone's day (or worse) is for a tiny minority of any of these individuals' fans to lash out. An overzealous Musk fan isn't Musk's fault nor is Swift responsible for the most outrageous acts undertaken by her legion of "Swifties."

There are things celebrities can do to discourage dogpiles.

Some celebrities, such as President Donald Trump, bring out the worst their fans. After being elected president in 2016, Trump was asked about instances of his supporters harassing minority groups. He half-heartedly turned to the camera and said, "Stop it." Given that this came after a campaign filled with racist rhetoric and violent imagery at his rallies, his on-air plea to his supporters came across rather unconvincing.

Even if he'd been more careful about his language or been more convincing in denouncing harassment, a number of his supporters would have probably have done it anyway. Like Musk, Trump cannot be held responsible for every action by his supporters. Still, if you're a celebrity, there's definitely some benefit in letting people know you don't want them to cause harm in your name. It won't solve every issue, but it will almost certainly help.

That's what Musk did, clearing the air a few hours after Biba's article was published:

He took a proactive step to minimize the effects of harassment.

The lesson here is about empathy and the importance of not causing others harm.

A common criticism, as posed to Gaiman, is that suggesting people take into account how their followers might react to something is tantamount to being forced to give up "free speech." What this fails to examine is how the fear that posting criticism of the president or a billionaire CEO will result in days of harassment might also have a chilling effect on "free speech" as a concept.

Social media also has a flattening effect in which people see someone like Trump singling out a family who criticized him as him just pushing back — failing to take into account that he is the president of the United States (and before that, a candidate for president and business tycoon).

These types of power dynamics exist everywhere, but we're usually able to navigate them a bit easier in the offline world.

For example, imagine you're at a baseball game and someone sitting in the row behind you deliberately spills a drink on your head. You might pop up ready for a fight, ready to get in their face. Now imagine the drink was spilled by a toddler. Would you still be ready to fight the toddler? Would you still get in the toddler's face? Probably not. This is because we all understand the importance of proportional responses. On the internet, this gets lost.

If we can find a way to bring offline proportionality and understanding of power dynamics to the world of social media, we can improve the way we communicate and live up to some of the platform's loftier ideals.

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