That's a tag of mine. Possibly useful on this last day of the year. Do you have any annual nonsense?
Things I've labeled "annual nonsense" over the years: Time's Person of the Year, lists of best posts of the year, Valentine's Day, the Met Gala, the Super Bowl half-time show, the anniversary of the day I started blogging, New Year's resolutions, New Year's predictions, the Oscars, setting the clocks forward/back (and critiquing the practice), Groundhog Day (and citing the movie), Thanksgiving (and pardoning turkeys), Rock and Roll Hall of Fame "inductions," April Fool's Day, Drynuary, the White House Correspondents Dinner, the Mummers Parade (controversial in 2016), adults doing Halloween, No Pants Subway Ride....
Here's something I counted as "annual nonsense" a decade ago that I haven't noticed happening anymore: the "war on Christmas."
And here's some "annual nonsense" that I used to notice that hadn't come to my attention in years but is still around, "The List of Words to Be Banished from the Queen's English for Mis-use, Over-use and General Uselessness." Back in 2008, I blogged about being told to quit saying "maverick," "from Wall Street to Main Street," "desperate search," "monkey" (the suffix), "game-changing," "carbon footprint," "winner of five nominations," "green," "going green," "first dude," "staycation."
But look, here's a new list of "banished words" for 2023. I'm surprised they're just getting around to "amazing," "irregardless," "absolutely," and "It is what it is." I've got to agree strongly about "GOAT," "inflection point," and "Does that make sense?" I'd say "quiet quitting" and "gaslighting" are too useful to let go of, not yet. And I don't see a problem with "moving forward" (because, despite the explanation given, there are other directions to move (unless you're talking about moving forward in time)).
Also, I haven't checked other recent years of banished words, but the one that's driving me up the wall is "obsessed." The claims of obsession are beyond ridiculous to pathetic these days. Somebody likes something — a food, a lipstick, and TV show — and they'll say with giddy emphasis: "I'm obsessed."
I remember when "obsession" was reserved for unwise love affairs, but that tipped over into a winking joke around 1985...
... and it's been downhill from there.
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Congresscritters spend our money as fast as they can get their grubby little hands on it?? Nancy just gave Congressional staffers a BIG raise, so NOW they make more than the legislators that get "voted" in. We are falling as a country, and these politicians want it to happen faster.
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/saraharnold/2022/12/30/nancy-pelosi-departs-position-after-raising-pay-for-house-staff-to-212000-n2617746
How about Polar Bear Plunges, Cinco de Mayo, St. Patricks Day and May Day for annual nonsense? YMMV.
“Inflection point” is a well-defined and very useful term in mathematics. However the phrase “driving me up the wall” is utterly hackneyed and deserves to go.
My word to be banished nominee is "horrific." I suppose a horrific event is worse than merely horrible as terrific is greater than terrible. Oops, something went wrong with my analogy.
Addendum - forgot to add the BttF scene...
https://youtu.be/l52tzIFcGCY
Calvin Klein "Obsession" add hahaha. What dreck. The best Calvin Klein ad ever was imbedded as a scene in Back to the Future where Marty meets his "hot" mom as her younger self. She had put Marty's pants on her hope chest and confessed she had never seen purple underwear before. A perfect movie scene pregnant with possibilities.
Seeing that Famous-Barr tag at the end of that ad brought back happy memories of my college days in St. Louis.
Famous-Barr was a St. Louis stalwart department store. "You're never far from Famous-Barr" was their motto, and then their parent, The May Company, got bought by Federated Dept. stores and got Macy-fied--just like Marshall Field and Co. in Chicago.
Famous-Barr's red-hot competitor in St. Louis was Stix, Baer & Fuller, acquired in 1966 by Associated Dry Goods, which eventually sold the Stix division to Dillard's, which then became part of Macy's.
Yup. You can shop any store you want as long as it is Macy's.
Valentine's day, 9/11 remembrances
"Went viral" should be trash canned. It means at least two people watched/ read about it.
At the end of the day.
You also may want to get rid of readers who reflexively make reference to SNL parodies "when SNL was funny," but until you do:
https://tinyurl.com/yyjwz83y
I'm on a daily nonsense cycle here.
Thanks for giving me a goal for 2023. Slow the roll.
do they still make Obsession? I miss that fragrance..
Of course, i don't go to strip clubs anymore; so i wouldn't get a chance to smell it if they did
Disinformation. It’s the redundancy. It highlights that the information being criticized is likely true and the user doesn’t want you to hear it, but we know that already.
Thanks for the list. I’ll tape it to the wall and make sure I squeeze them in every chance I get.
I'm passionate about this.
Banish 'nothingburger' and 'debunked' please. Any journalist or 'expert' who starts out their thought with either of those loses me. In fact, banish 'expert'. Banish 'talkingheads' (not the band). Banish 'hot investment'. Banish 'climate change'. A ridiculous concept. When hasn't the climate been changing, huh? Please let us know when the changing began.
Banish 'gluten-free', sous-vide, 'plant-based' meat, 'pre-biotics', 'healthy oils', and 'locally sourced' anything.
Banish 'saving Democracy', the FBI, CIA, DoJ, Depts. of Education & Transportation.
Banish Temujin.
I always hated "game changer", never used it.
I dislike "reached out," meaning "requested comment from," and "I want to" as in "I want to thank..." If you want to thank someone, just thank them. Also, "at the end of the day."
Let's banish the word "consequential." Biden uses it a lot and pronounces it slowly for emphasis. Very annoying.
"Legendary" was horribly overused to describe every person ,place,or thing of note. Now it has been replaced by "iconic". I am sick of them both.
"Playbook" My wife was always going on about how Trump was following "Hitler's playbook" when in fact that's the last thing he'd be doing.
Oh, the smell of it!
Claims of being obsessed with something have been around for a while. I used the word in the Seventies to refer to something that interested me, and person I was talking to laughed and said I sounded like Woody Allen.
With everyone texting, spelling and grammar are things of the past. We know (more or less) what people mean even if we don't find their way of putting it decorative. So there's not going to be much of an opportunity for the cliché police. At some point the tide will turn, but not for a while.
"Unprecedented" weather events.
Agree with 'amazing'. Everything seems to be AMAZING so nothing is.
And quit calling the Rose Bowl "The G-D-y of Them All". We need a break.
SNL makes fun of "Obsession."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9JbEUPh7FQ
"We're learning that..." from nightly news tv anchors and "bombshell" in cable news chyrons. Yes, I watch too much tv news.
The Olympics, the World Cup, elections: biennial and quadrennial nonsense?
'Here's something I counted as "annual nonsense" a decade ago that I haven't noticed happening anymore: the "war on Christmas."'
Because the lefties won.
My word banishments are 'impact' and the made-up word, 'impactful' when 'effective' and 'effectiveness' are meant.
Re: annual things/silliness, I do miss my mother's annual phone call on Groundhog Day asking if I'd had sausage for breakfast.
I'd like to see "It's my passion" struck from use - masked, socially distanced, vaccinated, dead from thought clotting. "Styling women's hair - it's my passion." "Studying the Social Significance of Slime and Legos in Imaginary worlds of Childhood - it's my passion." Studying The Years We Forget and Rightly So, 1913, 1928, 2019 - it's my passion." "The Perch Population under the Bridges of Madison County - it's my passion." "Criticizing suburban women- it's my passion."
And don't replace it with "It's my obsession."
'Unique.'
Or worse, 'Really unique.'
Banish Awesome. Banish Rainbows and Unicorns. “I’m good”. We probably haven’t hit peak “manifest” yet so I’ll call dibs on banishing that next year. Take the F word. Please.
"Does that make sense?"
At my last job, that was used by two of my bosses constantly. I learned to hate that phrase. It still haunts me, seven years later.
'I'd like to see "It's my passion" struck from use...'
'My truth.'
If we banned “so” and “like”, millennials would no longer be capable of speech. That would be a good thing.
The phrase “on steroids” could be eliminated with no great loss.
Barack's playlist.
To the vice president the signs marking the passage of time is not nonsense.
Just saying.
Curated has left the museum and is overused.
Some people love it.
'86 was in the midpoint of a period of several years when my wife and I didn't have a TV to watch, so I don't recall seeing this one, even at someone else's house. (Yes, we were those people.)
wildswan, one of the most interesting history books I've read in the last decade or so (could be longer) was about the year 1913. I'll try to recall what it was (I've already checked one online catalog).
"The Cliche Expert" was a regular feature of the New Yorker in the Thirties and Forties.
Some people seize the fashionable term or catch phrase when it first comes out. It seems a bit unfair to punish the people who come to it late or can't give it up.
I use “rebunked “ when making an unpopular argument.
"Eating clean" I would happier having never seen this idiotic phrase.
"irregardless," I thought we'd move on from that. 20 years ago.
"GOAT" = dumbest word(?) ever.
Can we lose the word "Hack"?
I'm still back at massive and awesome, and unable to move on.
Fact checker.
In my day every educated person was his, her, or xes own fact checker.
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