trending

The word “trending” has gone through an interesting metamorphosis in the social media generation.  Used to be, something was “trending up” or “trending down,” depending on whether one was discussing (respectively) butter or margarine, cauliflower or broccoli rabe.

Now things are just “trending.”   It is as though the quality of an item or topic is irrelevant; all that matters is that people are talking about it.  It’s the new version of “no publicity is bad publicity,” I guess.