Rant: No Bacn!

It's brand new, but already I hate bacn. Just as much as I hate leetspeak. I hope this newly-coined term goes the way of the "nybble" before too long, but unfortunately somehow I doubt it. Not while it's enjoying the kind of coverage it's getting in the major blogs, though it appears that like me, many of them think the term is kind of silly.

Unlike spam, the kind of email you don't want, bacn is defined as "email you want, but not right now". Email alerts such as Twitter updates, Facebook notifications, stock alerts, etc.

I get it. It's not quite spam, it's bacon. But why the hell did they foist upon us this annoying argot?

Maybe they thought that we'd confuse our email alerts with the cured strips of pork belly? Let's think back to spam for a moment. I don't know about you, but I can surely tell when you're talking about junk email as opposed to luncheon meat.

Or maybe they sought to prevent carpal tunnel in our wrists by saving us from typing in that extra "o" in the middle of the word?

Still, I can't begrudge them too much: It's a clever idea, giving us a new term for what I've been awkwardly referring to as my "necessary spam". But please, don't get too cute.

Spell it B-A-C-O-N.