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Welcome to day 4 of our 100-word challenge!
Today’s topic is the internet and social media, so let’s build our vocabulary in this area. Our challenge is almost over, but you can continue learning lots of words when you join my Vocabulary Builder Courses over at my website EspressoEnglish.net
All right, let’s learn these social media words. You can download the PDF guide to this lesson by clicking on the link in the video description, enter your e-mail address and I’ll be happy to send it to you.
Here are a few things you might see while you’re scrolling (meaning moving down on the screen):
Memes, which are funny images with words that are widely shared.
A crowdfunding campaign, which is an effort to raise money by asking regular people to give.
An AMA which stands for “ask me anything” – that’s a post where a famous or very knowledgeable person is open to receiving and answering questions.
Another very common thing in your social media feed – that’s the list of posts – is clickbait. That’s some text that’s very exaggerated, shocking, or makes you super curious – with the goal of getting you to click the link.
People who are famous on social media are known as influencers, because they can affect many people’s opinion with their content (the material they publish). They have a large audience/fanbase – these words refer to the group of people who follow them on social media.
Sometimes influencers are sponsored by brands – meaning a company pays them to talk about their product, as a form of advertising. Influencers might also be affiliates for companies, meaning they recommend the products and receive a commission (a portion of money) for every sale they help to make.
If you want to become an influencer, you should make some posts about topics that are trending, meaning they are currently very popular. You can use some hashtags on your post – words or short phrases starting with this symbol (#) – these identify the topic of the post and make it easier to search for related posts. Who knows? Maybe one of your posts will go viral, meaning it’s seen and shared by more and more and more people.
Another form of online publishing is blogging, writing a journal on the internet about your experiences and opinions, and someone who does this is a blogger.
Now that we have smartphones, it’s even easier to become a vlogger, meaning someone who regularly publishes videos about their experiences and opinions.
If you find a blog you like, you should bookmark it, meaning save the website to come back to it easily.
Of course, there’s a dark side to the internet. The more popular you become online, the more likely you are to have haters, people who dislike you and criticize you.
There are also trolls, people who make offensive comments on purpose. This can sometimes start a flame war, that’s an exchange of nasty or abusive messages between users in a public online space.
Another thing to watch out for online is scams – tricks to get your money without giving anything in return. One common method used by scammers is phishing – sending you a fake e-mail that looks like it’s from your bank or something like that, with the goal of getting your password. If you’re not careful, you could be hacked, meaning someone has gained unauthorized access to your computer or your accounts.
Social media is designed to be addictive, meaning it’s hard to stop using it. If you find yourself doomscrolling – this means to spend an excessive amount of time reading bad news about the world – it might be time for a digital detox – that’s a period of time you spend away from screens in order to improve your habits and mental health.
Now you know 25 words related to the online world – what others would you add to this list? Let me know in the comments. I hope my channel is a positive place on the internet where you can learn English easily and feel more confident about your skills.
Before you go, download the free PDF guide to review today’s vocabulary words, and I’ll talk to you tomorrow in our final challenge video.
