'Major major' expressions we won't miss in 2011

It was a strange year. The best of times, the worst of times, in many ways. The Philippines held clean, automated elections for once  followed by old-fashioned politics as usual. Tourism went up  then a hostage crisis unfolded live on TV. A beauty queen flubbed her Q&A, also live on TV. Hayden Kho sold perfume. It was a hella weird year.

Across the ocean, the US launched full-body scans and too-close-for-comfort patdowns at airports, spawning the term “gate rape.” Conan O’Brien took a year off from TV and grew a beard; the term “Leno giver” was coined to describe the way the red-haired host got ousted from NBC. A certain British oil company’s mishaps led to the term “That’s what BP said…” to describe any dubious accountability. And a movie called Inception prompted hipsters to reference “Check your Totem” whenever reality seemed to be in question.

Oh, yeah. There were also “WikiLeaks.”

Closer to home, Filipinos adopted their own mix of phrases and expressions that will not survive the full-body scan and patdown as we enter 2011.

“At the end of the day...” A long-winded qualifier often used by public officials who are looking for someone to point the finger of blame at. Usually comes out in spades shortly after a crisis. (See: Tourist bus siege at Rizal Park, Maguindanao Massacre, DOT slogan fiasco.) 

“Creative.” Once upon a time, a perfectly good adjective got all full of itself and turned into a noun. This is ad agency jargon for someone who is deemed to have artistic powers (as opposed to magical powers, like Harry Potter). We used to speak of a “creative” person; now this term has mutated into its very own species: the Creative, who haunts various content-generating industries and is not to be confused with the Non-Creative. Or those coming up with slogans for the Department of Tourism.

“Epic.” Often used in conjunction with “fail.” There seems to be a thing among FB users and slackers who like to squeeze everything down into four-letter words: maximum intended effect with minimal effort. Sure, the perfectly good term “cool” has been around forever. But it’s no longer enough. “Epic” became the annoying slacker phrase in 2010 to describe anything that is slightly noteworthy in our lives for about, oh, five seconds.

“Fail.” The flipside of “epic.” “Fail” is the term of banishment for everything that goes wrong as we log every single moment of our lives and monitor the lives of others. Born from a million YouTube comment posts (every time someone attempts, say, a skateboard trick that goes awry), “fail” is a one-second, one-syllable tribunal meant to wrap up every bit of floating phenomena that passes before our socially networked eyes, assess it, and move along. Think of “epic” and “fail” as the verbal equivalent of the “thumbs up/thumbs down” buttons on Facebook. So when did we all get appointed judge, jury and executioner?

“Fugly.” Admittedly a fun, funny word, born of a natural marriage between “f*****g” and “ugly,” it’s time to give this shorthand fashion term a rest in 2011.

“Hella.” Not fully embraced by Filipinos, it’s a weird Americanism (actually traced to San Francisco) that has viraled due to Facebook. It’s an adjective used instead of “really” or “very,” but in practice it’s been dismembered, simply tacked on at the ends of sentences. (“The last round of the Pacman-Margarito fight was hella.”)

“HOHOL (Hang out hang out lang).” A specimen of textspeak that has spawned its own homegrown variants. For some reason, text acronyms are getting longer and longer these days, requiring more active thumbage. From the speedy “HH” (for “holding hands”), we quickly expanded to three-digit “LOL” and “WTF.” Now we have the usual Filipino habit of doubling up phrases for emphasis, resulting in five-digit acronyms like “HOHOL” to describe one’s personal status or intended plans for later. This has led to odd variations on daily activities (WOWOL = “work out work out lang”) and reporting on one’s romantic activities (MOMOL = “make out make out lang” and MOMOX = “make out make out extreme”). Who said literacy was dead?

“IKR.” We’ve already encountered the annoying phrase “I know, right?” in years past. This is the speed-text version, circa 2010, for people too lazy to fully spell out their clichés. It will probably drop from usage at lightning speeds in 2011.

“I serve at the President’s pleasure.” Comes up whenever a boneheaded error is made by a Cabinet official that requires stepping down  in other words, too often. More accurately, the phrase should be “I serve at the President’s displeasure.” This vaguely GRO-ish sounding statement is roughly translated as “I’m tired of taking the heat, this job is too tough for me, so go ahead and fire me.” Epic fail, in other words.

“It rules.” Used to be  back in 2009  the go-to superlative was “rocks.” As in “You rock!” or “That rocks, dude!” Now we’ve apparently reverted to more monarchic times. Time to dethrone this one.

“Man up.” A silly, sexist kind of phrase that circled the globe in 2010. It refers to adopting a certain amount of testicularity in difficult situations. Does it then follow that guys who act too macho need to “man down”?

“Mag level-up ka na.” There was a lot of “upping” going on in 2010. First “man up,” then “level up,” a kind of mutation of “take it to the next level” (an annoying cliché if ever there was one). Blame it on gaming apps, Inception, and Tron: Legacy. My Pinoy sources say this one was overused way too much last year. Maybe it’s time to bring things down a level.

“Major major.” It’s not so much the phrase made internationally famous (and unintentionally hilarious) by Miss Universe contestant Venus Raj that’s the problem; it’s more the immediate co-opting and overuse of the term by just about every smartass out there. Anyway, Filipinos know she was just really, really excited, in a major, major way.

“Pilipinas Kay Ganda.” Nothing wrong with the sentiment. It just doesn’t make any sense if you’re trying to attract tourists who don’t speak any Tagalog. The literal English translation (“Philippines: So Beautiful”) also sounds a bit like a hard sell, as though the extra modifier (“so”) is needed to make your case. In any event, the slogan failed to “WOW.”

“Squee.” Short for “squeal,” this annoying text fragment made the rounds in 2010. Enthusiasm so breathless, it manages to lop off a consonant. Wow. Epic.

“Team (Blank).” Whether you were with Team Jacob or Team Edward, Team Jay or Team Coco, this was the year when we got really sick and tired of everybody picking sides. Tacking on “Team” to every conflict out there was a favorite watercooler sport in 2010. Perhaps it was spread by Facebook, with its endless comment threads and lists. Maybe it was because of the competitive spirit brought on by the World Cup. It’s the kind of adversarial mindset that led a certain captive octopus named Paul to get dragged into picking Spain over the Netherlands in the Cup Final. And look at him now: he’s dead! Fail!