In a previous life I was a partner and the chief engineer in a recording studio. I had a chalkboard mounted in the studio and on it each week I would post the “Saying of the Week” or sometimes the “Gesture of the Week”. That saying or gesture would be used to respond to any situation, applicable or not so much. I find that social media and the information superhighway has taken that concept nationwide. Here are a few of my current favorites.
“Impor-unt”: The Orwellian perversion of the English language proceeds at a progressive pace. I find it important that the word impor-unt is not actually correct, in fact there is no U in the word important. However, the speaker’s tongue is able to rest a bit without having to pronounce that troublesome t. Or is it an uroublesome u?
“That’s a great question”: This seems to have replaced “so….” As the preamble to any query response. There are apparently a plethora of great questions, now if there were only some great answers.
“Don’t try to catch a falling knife”: Or run with scissors.
“We still have some wood to chop”: Most of these folks have never chopped any wood and if they were called upon to do so someone would have to tell them which end of the axe to grab. But I will advise them: “Don’t try to catch a swinging axe”. Just a thought.
“Trees don’t grow to the sky”: If not where do they grow to? Where does the sky begin anyway? That’s a great question.
“Negative growth”: My understanding of the language is that growth is when something gets bigger. I guess it sounds better than some alternatives when your broker is trying to explain why they recommended that loser, like “disappointing performance” or the generally more accurate “in the toilet” or “sorry you lost your a$$”.
I will finish with a gesture that has become popular in the tedious world of Zoom. Let’s call it the “I see beyond” look. Over the last few years of free money all you needed in Silicon Valley was a “visionary” founder, a good story, a grossly optimistic TAM and you too could become an overnight billionaire (see WeWork). Now these techno-babble charlatans are having a harder time coaxing honey from the marks so they are going overboard on posturing. My current favorite is when, on a video call, they spend half their time looking at the ceiling so that you, the sucker, are supposed to think that they are having lofty, dare I say, revelatory thoughts about how much money we all are going to make. Maybe they actually are having lofty thoughts or possibly they are watching out for that falling knife.