Feed (Words I don’t like #3)

Here’s another word I don’t like: ‘Feed’, used in the internet sense, as in ‘there are a lot of angry people in my Twitter feed today.’   It always jars when I come across it.  But the odd part in this case is that it’s actually quite an expressive word to use.  What grates with me, now I think about it, is its use in an unironic/uncritical way.

In fact I’d go as far as to say that, if nobody used it like that, I might choose it myself.  It has a suitably industrial and impersonal feel.  It makes me think of a machine that dispenses food pellets at timed intervals to animals in a battery farm.  If not already stripped of those connotations, it would do the job pretty well.

See also Problematic (#1), Heft, Grin (#2)