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August 13, 2007 5:08 AM PDT

Can Mondays be the new Fridays?

by Caroline McCarthy
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(Credit: The Diagram)

Here's an infographic map from thediagram.com that charts any number of occurrences of the ubiquitous marketing buzz phrase "is the new" from throughout the year 2005.

Among them: South Korea is the new Hong Kong, nepotism is the new polio, Samsung is the new Sony, RSS is the new WWW, Karl Lagerfeld is the new Steve Jobs, and cocoa is the new red wine. (No, it isn't.) Tuesday is the new Thursday, but everybody knew that already. And knitting is apparently the new rock 'n roll, a trend which thankfully appears to have disappeared with 2005. No offense to hardcore knitters, but the "I'm going to knit because it's so ironically cool" thing just didn't float.

At the center is a sort of vortex composed of everything that's supposed to be, naturally, the new black. Click here for the big version.

(Via Information Aesthetics)

Caroline McCarthy, a CNET News staff writer, is a downtown Manhattanite happily addicted to social-media tools and restaurant blogs. Her pre-CNET resume includes interning at an IT security firm and brewing cappuccinos. E-mail Caroline.
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Are you kidding?
by mikele11111 August 13, 2007 5:48 AM PDT
Karl Lagerfeld the new Steve Jobs? Somebody is smoking crack.
Reply to this comment
And by that, you mean...
by devbost August 13, 2007 5:57 AM PDT
...that fashion is the new crack. Right? :)
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Canada the new Estonia?
by DavyBoyWonder August 13, 2007 7:15 AM PDT
Third world? Just wait for this whole sub-prime mortgage ball to get rolling. We'll see whose the new Estonia.
Reply to this comment
Smart is the new Stupid
by albertsoler August 13, 2007 10:15 AM PDT
Too many bloggers and so-called real journalists (Is there such a thing anymore?) are competing to be the "smartest" or "cleverest" writer on the planet. Any second rate programmer can write a "dumb" program to automatically fill in the phrase:

%s1 is the new %s2.

Even that simple bit of code would be considered to be rather insipid. So, bloggers and journalist beware, whenever you conjure up a new "...is the new..." phrase, we're laughing at you.
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Doesn't Microsoft...
by thedreaming August 13, 2007 10:55 AM PDT
...already use the words, "The Social" for their zune marketing?
Reply to this comment
Done (in 3 lines)
by _t3h August 13, 2007 5:13 PM PDT
Any second rate programmer can do it of course, but how short? (moving the open() line into
"words" on the next line does work, but makes it much slower as the wordlist is reloaded for
each print). Now somebody put this in as a CGI on a webpage and let them crawl it :)

#!/usr/bin/env python
import random
words = open("/usr/share/dict/words",'r').read().split("
")
for a in range(10): print "%s is the new %s" % tuple(random.sample(words,2))

(kill the top one if you want 3, but then you can't execute it from the shell)
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About The Social

CNET News' Caroline McCarthy is a downtown Manhattanite who believes that, despite popular opinion, the Web can actually help your social life. She's happily addicted to fun social-media tools from Twitter to Yelp to Facebook, sends an inordinate number of text messages, and has a tendency to waste time at the office reading restaurant blogs. Here, she explores all facets of the Web's gregarious side, as well as the unique tech culture in her home city of New York. (Don't call it Silicon Alley.)

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