Criteria of making an acceptable word/character in Chinese In the English language, the dictionaries are updated yearly to include new words and modifications of current spellings that have been accepted due to common usage. For example, the internet age saw the explosion of words and meaning that have been previously unheard of before. New words can range from a street slang that comes into prominence, or a new spelling to entirely new made-up words.
Is it the same in Chinese? For example, if there is a group of (say, influential) people who mistakenly wrote a word with one stroke less than current standard/correct form. Since they are the influential group and were able to purvey this to the group, is it possible that this 'wrong' word becomes the standard in the future?
As far as some slang words are concerned, they are usually combinations of existing words, or use words with multiple meanings. But is it possible that people have created entirely new characters to denote something? What might be recent/popular examples of these?
There is a yearly contest in Japan for creating new kanji. Last year, the winner was a new character for &quot;social distancing&quot;

A clever play on the character 座, meaning &quot;to sit&quot;, where the two 人 &quot;people&quot; are moved apart.
Some other interesting ones:

&quot;Sign language&quot;, taking the character for &quot;sound&quot; 音 and replacing the 日 with 目, which means &quot;eye&quot;.

Taking the character 会, which means &quot;meeting&quot; and replacing the bottom part with a Z, to mean &quot;online meeting&quot;.
You can see all the entries and their meanings (in Japanese) on their website.