Making a word 'real'

In the video "What makes a word real", It talks about the many ways people view the English language and how some may react when adding new words into the dictionary. And as the titles states, they also cover the debate on what makes a word 'real'. The concept of making a word is interesting in itself but actually getting a word to catch on and be spoken by others is just fascinating. Who gets to choose what words get to be considered a 'real word', or better yet who decides what gets put into the dictionary as well as putting down the meaning and making it a 'real' word.

This is where the speaker in the video asks the audience how many of them  look to see who edits the dictionary's they use.  Not many raised up their hand, and it wasn't much of a shock that many didn't check. What surprised me was that I had never thought of looking up the editors of the dictionary whether it be online or by book and it just kind of shocked me because I remembered looking up a word before and when finding the meaning of the word I never questioned it, I just went on with my life like nothing. That question really hit me, it brought curiosity to me about how the editors made the decisions when adding a new word into the dictionary. For example the word 'selfie' was not a 'real' word until many people started to use it. Even if the word sounded weird, when spoken, people knew the meaning behind it and slowly you started to heard it being used often when out-and-about. That's where the debate comes in, does a word get recognized as a 'real' word if it is spoken enough times?   Anne Curzan is the speaker in this video and throughout the video when speaking she brought up her class and how for in the beginning of every class she has her students teach her two new slang words, such as the examples adorkable and hangry (which I am guilty of using [hangry]). That's where you could ask yourself do the slang words kids make up have influence on making them part of our language? I believe so, like with the word 'selfie' or the word 'bae' they were words people said many times even though it wasn't necessarily a 'real' word but people understood the meaning of it and knew what you were talking about which soon was spoken so much that it was added into the dictionary and considered a 'real' word. So going back to the main point, the editors, when adding words they are always looking out for words that may be spreading and may be catching on with many people. 
So I guess what I took from this was that if many people start using a word that isn't in the dictionary but are using a lot, it can be reconsidered as a word to be added in our vocabulary and also be acknowledged as a 'real word'.