“Holiday” Celebrations and New Words for Your Conversations

The web was certainly poppin’ this week with Popcorn Lover’s Day taking place yesterday and people sharing their thoughts on the newest words to be recognized in the English

language. Here’s a roundup of all my favorite things from the week: 

• Food lovers rejoiced as we celebrated National Oreo Day on Tuesday, National Cereal Day on Wednesday and Popcorn Lover’s Day on Thursday. In celebration, brands jumped on these silly holidays left and right. Oreo gave away one million candy bars to fans who filled out a form online and Kellogg’s partnered with actress Hailee Steinfeld and hosted a party at their café in New York City.
• International Women’s Day was celebrated on Thursday, and Barbie took part by launching its“Inspiring Women” collection. Featuring female role models Amelia Earhart, Frida Kahlo and Katherine Johnson, the brand struck the right cord with many by celebrating these women’s contributions to society. However, judging from reaction on social media, a brand that seemed to miss the mark was McDonald’s. The company flipped its iconic golden arches upside down to create a “W” at a location in California, and many criticized this move saying that it was a cheap PR stunt.
• If Facebook’s new Voice Clip status update tests go well, we might all have the option to record our own mini-podcasts soon. The social media giant is testing a new feature in India that would allow users to record a short audio snippet that could be used as a status update.
• A group of 850 words were officially added to the online Merriam Webster Dictionary this week, including glamping, cryptocurrency and mansplaining, but the internet seemed to take the most to dumpster fire, which now means “an utterly calamitous or mismanaged situation or occurrence.”
• Could robots be taking over the world? Some Amazon Alexa users certainly are starting to think so after they reported hearing unprompted laughter from Alexa-enabled devices this week. Amazon has said that they are working on fix to this creepy situation.