I don’t know how many of these wretched social things I’ve got embroiled with, but in a weak moment I must have signed up for something that calls itself Naymz – Empowering Reputable Professionals.
I feel deeply ashamed – and also more than a little irritated, because what they’re actually doing is extracting money from weak-minded professionals by that old con of “someone has visited your profile” – but you won’t know who it is till you pay us some money. But there are other benefits. For example, I can “enhance my online reputation and Naymz experience” at the same time.
On balance I would prefer to be disreputable and unempowered. And I don’t give a tuppenny damn about my online reputation. I refuse to take people who talk such cliche-ridden tripe seriously.
Empowering is one of those puke-making words used by slimy corporate twats in meetings – the sort of people who are always cutting edge, proactive, state of the art and full of shit.
So I was glad to see in my London free paper that someone helpful has made a short list of other expressions that should be kicked into touch. The most odious is probably product evangelist for salesman, though a holistic cradle-to-grave approach is a good runner up.
How I hate the people who come up with this drivel. Perhaps you could cascade that down to your people.
I’m still hearing a lot of “going forward” which I hated so much even four years ago that I wrote a column about it in the magazine I was then editing. To my eternal joy, top MILF Lucy Kellaway recently expanded on the subject in her usual brilliant way: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7453584.stm
Hey John, great post.. I think it’s a little out of my lgueae at the moment.. still trying to get construction down… Here’s a link to my studies:Also… do you have suggestions for controlling the shapes of your lines when working on a Wacom tablet? On paper I don’t draw quite as sketchy and it’s pretty upsetting..
Of course, what I forgot to mention was why I think this kind of garbage language (now there’s an ugly conjunction…) has become so prevalent. We don’t make things any more. Manufacturing, and more specifically engineering, prize accuracy and efficiency. While some marketers – in deference to our host – value these qualities, many service-orientated, management jobs rely on the absence of accuracy and efficiency. It’s all about politics, where succintness and honesty are a hindrance. “Going forward” is never not redundant; “empowerment” is utterly meaningless in anything other than a psycho-political sense for people who are a bit useless.
In other words, this is nothing less a symptom of our civilisation’s rapid decline. (Cheers!)
When the expression used is essentially, and perhaps deliberately, meaningless, I agree jargon is garbage language.
But, sometimes today’s metaphor was yesterday’s jargon. So perhaps we had better not be too supercilious about it.
History may just judge us to be silly old fuddy-duddues instead of the intensely acute guardians of language that we fondly believe ourselves to be.
Perhaps I should read that again, again…
fuddy-duddues is a corruption of a well known Australian expression “footy dude deuce”, which if you are not familiar with it, means ace footballer who has scored two own goals.
I hope that clarifies the expression for those of the northern hemisphere persuasion.
I think it is a great way to show Veterans there is help and support out their for them. Not every Veteran sccfessuully intergrates back into civilian life. And it is up to those like us and others to show them there is help. From one former Marine to the rest of my military brothers and sisters. Thank You for your serves and come home safe.