"Epic" "awesome" "revolutionary" "never before seen" "once in a lifetime"
Everything is hyperbole, to the point where "epic"--something that should describe the most important events of human history--is reduced to pressing buttons well in a videogame made for children
Not to say the Protestant core of the USA hasn't had something to do with it (it's the END TIMES, you're going to burn in hell FOREVER, God's love is INFINITE, etc.) but it seems like mostly a market construction
Comical how liberals do the whole "newspeak is coming" don't realize it has; don't need to ban words if you make them completely meaningless
"Freedom" means nothing, "revolution" means nothing, "just" means nothing, "socialism" means nothing, "democracy" means nothing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recuperation_(politics)
It's not just advertising. The media turns politics into sports and entertainment. I made a short list of some headline words I kept seeing in r/politics...
- blast
- brutal & brutally
- destroy
- devastating
- eviscerate
- rip
- savage & savagely
- scathing
- searing
- slam
- takedown
- tear into
- torch
- trash [as a verb]
- troll [as a verb]
- unload
And the opposite is true too. In mainstream media - Biden's brutal treatment of Haitians in Texas doesn't get such descriptors even though it's actually brutal.
It all started with the "Ben Shapiro destroys leftist snowflakes" kind of videos which lib media for some reason thought would generate more clicks and now public discourse is a bar fight.
pretty soon we're gonna get shit like CHAD Joe Biden SAVAGELY DESTROYS COMMUNIST SNOWFLAKE Vladimir Putin in SCATHING speech TEARING INTO 2016 election interference. :agony-shivering:
That's absolutely going to happen.
On a review of White, AKA Bret Easton Ellis whining about no one appreciating his genius for 300 fucking pages:
"Snowflakes on both coasts in withdrawal from Rachel Maddow's nightly Kremlinology lesson can purchase a whole book to inspire paroxysms of rage . . . a veritable thirst trap for the easily microaggressed. It's all here. Rants about Trump derangement syndrome; MSNBC; #MeToo; safe spaces."—Bari Weiss, The New York Times
“Snowflakes on both coasts in withdrawal from Rachel Maddow’s nightly Kremlinology lesson can purchase a whole book to inspire paroxysms of rage . . . a veritable thirst trap for the easily microaggressed. It’s all here. Rants about Trump derangement syndrome; MSNBC; #MeToo; safe spaces.”—Bari Weiss, The New York Times
shove these nerds into lockers lmao
There's something quaint about people who see the 'culture war' as the most important thing in the world (Weiss, at least, has Israel in second place)
It's really the indicator of First World Syndrome where Twitter and pop culture defines your life, and everything outside of that is meaningless
Weiss, at least, has Israel in second place
Of course she's a Zionist.
When you get to a saturation point--advertisements on TV, the public transportation, billboards, your computer, your phone--I think there's an understanding that it's negative, but it's so pervasive it seems futile
No one likes taxes, but you can point to them having a real use
No one likes advertising, and it mainly exists to cement pre-existing companies deeper into the social consciousness rather than generate sales
One of the most striking features of USSR photos is complete absence of advertising. It really helps to understand how incredibly ugly ads are.
The funniest ad phrases to me are the ones that have to do with manufacturing. "Aerospace grade materials" is just fucking aluminum. "Precision machined" is usually just CNC'd.
Read that as 'Semitic' and 'seismic' simultaneously at first
Some Jewish seismologist saying "continents are real" and Reversi leaps up and screams "NO! NO!" jumping up and down
Not as weird as the paranormal activity sequel I dreamed of last week
it was a trailer for a new Paranormal Activity movie that involved experimental warheads with some kind of new chemical weapon falling into the ocean and some fish (in front of a camera, maybe it was at an aquarium or something) ate the tips and started transitioning to the opposite sex, somehow it was actually really creepy in the dream
I don't think it's meaningfully possible to "damage" a living, thriving language and it always strikes me as a very reactionary thing to worry about. Like white genocide or something. Like, no, the English language is going to be fine, I assure you lol
I have no trouble communicating scale or intensity to people I'm conversing with.
english is a fucked up language. it's completely adapted and evolved as time goes by. the more time goes by, the less colonialist white people have to do with it. this entire original post is reactionary as fuck (probably unintentionally, but still.)
the more time goes by, the less colonialist white people have to do with it.
The colonialist white person never went away, they just became members of the World Bank and IMF and State Department and military-industrial complex as a whole
What the fuck was Afghanistan if not a bungled colonialist project? White colonialist thinking bleeds through every single western analysis of China: "oh, if only we could show them the light of western values and DemocracyTM"
this entire original post is reactionary as fuck
"The bourgeoisie and servants of capital will manipulate language via ideology, and the capitalist class will dissect and debase language in order to make profits" is reactionary? Alright, sure. Point is that the way language is currently shifting is fucked up, not that languages should never change ever
Like, no, the English language is going to be fine, I assure you lol
It exists, sure. But between McCarthy rendering all left-sounding words politically untenable and right-wing think tanks warping "welfare" and "equality" and "working class" into what they want it to mean, let's not pretend we can just go with a flow and be all like "eh it's fine, I'll use another word" when there are only so many words to use
when there are only so many words to use
This is just incorrect, though. There aren't "only so many words to use." You act like words are some kind of precious resource handed down to us by God with a finite supply. That just isn't how it works.
Okay, try to explain socialism to a modern USA citizen without using the words "workers," "labor," "means of production," "market," "class," "ownership," "property," or any variation of them.
Try to explain someone being transgender (to a modern USA citizen) without using the words "gender," "sex," "man" or "woman," or any variation of them.
You act like words are some kind of precious resource handed down to us by God with a finite supply. That just isn’t how it works.
I decided to vaklfyruz my jukluutra during the ertratusi, but the fulskr happened to yoll the njaruhu instead.
What? You didn't follow?
Words, like culture, have inertia and momentum, it takes time for people--especially large populations--to grasp them, and new words can very easily have their definitions shifted (see: the usage of 'woke')
Okay, try to explain socialism to a modern USA citizen without using the words “workers,” “labor,” “means of production,” “market,” “class,” “ownership,” “property,” or any variation of them.
The things you create and the tools by which you create them should be yours. Easy. Plain English. I swear some people here are so deep in jargon that they don't actually understand the meanings of their own phrases.
The things you create and the tools by which you create them should be yours.
Did I trip and fall into a life coach seminar
not disagreeing, but this reminds me of the cyberbullying tweet. like, hahahahahahaha how the fuck is running out of words real hahahahah just makes sounds
My personal bugbear is pr/pitch meeting speak. Optimize, pivot, partner, fucking "content"!
I fucking hate the word content. It reduces all actuall artistic endeavor to nothing more than what's contained between advertisements. Really gives the game away as far as what America's priorities are
I struggle to describe media I've enjoyed without using terms originating from Twitch or 4chan
Also, I don't think the terms mean nothing. Like obviously in the context of US politics shit like freedom and democracy are a joke, but that's just America in general.
Even that's fallen out of fashion again most places beyond the tech grift, but essentially there's only two extremes of ad copy for example these days. There's the wildly hyperbolic, cringe style of epic revolutionary jargon experiences. And then there's literally doing data input for software that completely stamps out any personality, imagery, or space for creativity. That's why so much web content writing is impenetrably boring, because the authors get little frowny faces from the software saying they can't post it because a sentence is more than 20 words long or they didn't repeatedly use the same six software pre-approved 'active verbs'.
As for the perhaps more actively damaging (as opposed to just making everything stupider or more bland) erosion of meaning in language I agree with you :100-com: although I'd leverage most of the blame there at so called journalism and news media than advertising per se. That being said, you could certainly make the case that news media in a capitalist system is simply advertising for the product of capital's ideology and opinion.
That being said, you could certainly make the case that news media in a capitalist system is simply advertising for the product of capital’s ideology and opinion.
Not that journalism was always prudent (yellow journalism, etc.), but without question the media industry took its cues from the advertising that came before it
Not to say the Protestant core of the USA hasn’t had something to do with it (it’s the END TIMES, you’re going to burn in hell FOREVER, God’s love is INFINITE, etc.) but it seems like mostly a market construction
I have a pet theory that all the divine absolutes (all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good, etc) were originally meant as this sort of exaggerated boasting, like fans at a stadium chanting "We're number 1!" and it was only later on that people started interpreting it literally.
I do get frustrated with words that are vague to the point of meaninglessness, like you mention at the end. However I don't really think that the "power creep" of words is a new or significant problem. Do you think there's ever been a time when kids wouldn't reach for the most extreme words to describe stuff?
El, one of the precursors to the modern conceptualization of Hashem in modern Judaism, was a king-god figure akin to An or Zeus, complete with physical depictions and even a wife, Asherah. As Judaism developed, however, the idea of the pantheon was either left behind or intentionally quashed by rulers. The words to describe Him, however, stayed the same. Baal as a word meant lord, but became synonymous with competing cults, while El, which means both God and lord, is to this day considered a defining word for God in the names of people and places, ie, El-ijah, Samue-el, Isra-el, etc.
Do you think there’s ever been a time when kids wouldn’t reach for the most extreme words to describe stuff?
It's been this way since year one, sure, but the difference is that culture moves at the speed of light thanks to the Internet and TV, the language doesn't have time to resettle itself
Super skeptic about this, if language could be shaped through advertising, then escalator, kerosene or taser would remain registered brand names. especially relevant to your question of suppressing words in an orwellian way, they couldn't remove those words from widespread use, thus they became generic denominators to their chagrin.
further, charged words like freedom have their meanings deeply rooted in ideology, already their meaning is loose and inconsistent. zizek calls this process capitonnage, the signifying point (the quilting point) where meaning is derived from is somewhere else and not in the word itself, so no matter how many times you read "a revolution in payment technology" will the word "revolution" carry a different connotation to you and every other filthy commie like you who share a similar ideology, likewise "freedom" will not mean the same to you than it does to a libertarian, and so on. wouldn't worry about this too much in particular, i think ideology is way more insidious than just advertisments. hell, i don't think advertising is effective at all in the first place.
thus they became generic denominators to their chagrin.
Chagrin? The word itself is an advertisement.
"Which kleenex should I get? Oh... Kleenex."
Yes, chagrin, when a brand becomes too common place, they can't use it as a brand anymore, because you can't brand your product as a generic denominator.
Words are symbols and the situation we use them in matters more than the words themselves.
I find myself more bothered/confused by people mixing up when its okay to use words in a meaningless way and when they needed to make the effort to use words in a more concrete way.
