4 ms·

"A Facebook", "An Instagram", "We all had Instagrams", am I the only person who finds this incredibly annoying? "Ten movies streaming across that, that Interne

• jt2190 13y ago
  French and Spanish speakers put articles in front of everything, and none of them seem too bothered by it.
  • Gormo 13y ago
    Indefinite articles?
• mhurron 13y ago
  Ya, kids really aren't up on technology. But seriously, the internet is not something you just dump things on, it's not a big truck.
• discostrings 13y ago
  This, along with "I put it on my Facebook" and even "Do you have Facebook?" bother me every time I hear them. Unfortunately, this usage seems to be gaining momentum even outside colloquial conversation--I cringed when I first saw "Your Firefox is up to date". While on the surface it's just a peculiarity, I think there's also an aspect of this sort of usage that masks the very notion of how things work. It subtly leads one to feel more that these are personalized, bespoke services rather than massive projects. I generally try to take a descriptivist approach to language usage, but this one makes me cringe a little every time.
• freshyill 13y ago
  Someone should write a blog about this topic.
• joonix 13y ago
  Like it or not, language is always evolving. Someone older than you was annoyed by your teenage vernacular as well. Writing "account" after everything is kind of silly when I think about it. These aren't banks or wholesale vendors. I'm not sure what my Instagram "account" involves, it's just file storage. After all, we all understand what they mean by "I got an instagram," and it seems like English is always leaning towards function over form.