I spoke too soon in my ridicule of the Toronto Star use of the term “storified.”

Actually, that should be Storified. “Storify” seems to be a new-ish neologism for a proprietary tool that allows a journalist to pull in elements of “social media” to build a story. Hence, “storify.” I mean, “Storify.”

It’s not that new – I just found an article about Storify, from almost exactly a year ago, on the website of the Poynter Institute, a journalism school in St. Petersburg, Florida.

I suppose Storify as a verb is no more stupidifying than Google as a verb, or referring to the brief messages that are sent using this global system of interconnected computer networks as “tweets.” Tim Berners-Lee, one of the architects of the Internet, famously said, “The World-Wide Web was developed to be a pool of human knowledge, and human culture, which would allow collaborators in remote sites to share their ideas and all aspects of a common project.”

I wonder whether Berners-Lee and his colleagues dreamed it would ever become principally a tool of commerce; secondarily a way of perpetuating falsehoods, hate and insipidity; and third, a repository of most of the world’s exclamation marks (OMG!). The “pool of human knowledge” thingie has fallen somewhere much farther down the list.

So, mea culpa, Toronto Star – this time. I guess you did legitimately Storify that… story.

However, I plan to continue to resist adopting and perpetuating these wacko neologisms and meaningless buzzwords and catch phrases.

Storify – I’ll retire to Bedlam…