Anti-social

Can anybody speak English anymore, or have proper grasp of semantics? I was reading an interesting article titled is social media making you anti-social?, and couldn't help but wonder: does the author of this article know the actual meaning of the word antisocial? Because if he does, he surely knows that he's suggesting that social media could turn you into a criminal... or someone avert to society, you know, as in "I wish society disappeared tomorrow". But of course, that is not what he meant. He meant to use the word asocial, but he probably has never heard this word in his life.

It shouldn't take too much effort for a writer to figure this out, knowing the meaning and effect of the prefixes anti- and a-. But that's too much to ask right? He needs proper English anyways. And don't give me the crap about evolution of languages... this is not language evolution, this is plain idiocy. There are two words in the language, for two different purposes. Use them! Don't fuse their meaning into one, just because you're an idiot who doesn't know the existence of the other one. There's a thing called the dictionary, you know?

OK, enough with the rant... now comes the sad part. I have to take back what I said against this writer because apparently, since there are enough morons who use antisocial in this way, the dictionary now has adopted this meaning, and lists it as a synonym to asocial. Great... So, he wasn't wrong (technically) in using the word. Sorry, my bad... I still thing it's wrong though :-P

Even more sad is that he's probably done better using the word he used, because that's what most readers would expect and understand... *sigh*... Any day now definately will be added to the dictionary. As an interesting note, definately gets over 14 million hits on Google, over 10% the hits of the properly spelled word... Yes! that's the wrong version of the word! :-P

The reason this angers me is very simple: it feels as though we succumb to stupidity. Yes, there is a proper way to spell this... or this is the proper word to use in this case... but most people are too stupid to figure that out, and since languages are spoken by people, and morons are a majority... well...

This strengthens my theory that average humanity's I.Q. must be on decline (sharp decline!). It seems to me that humanity is moving towards an Idiocracy :-)