Words, usages, and phrases that annoy the shit out of you...

anus champ

LoadStar, the floppy-disk-based magazine for Commodore 64 users, has always been a ... a touchstone for me.

xp that was the exact article that led me to mention it actually

lol i figured it might've been

I'm still waiting to see which Democratic candidate will turn out to be our Lode Runner for Atari 800, Commodore 64, and Apple II systems with at least 64k RAM

Avoid clichés by isolating, quarantining, and thoroughly fumigating them.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dm6vZTJXcAA_W-H.jpg:small

ew

I really want to start responding to 'morning' with a hearty 'well-observed'.

"Hello!"
"Oh, how very original."

Posts that start 'This is huge' followed by some revelation the author is certain will DEFINITELY lead to Trump's impeachment/Brexit being cancelled/whatever

'I'm so sorry for your loss.'
'I'm so sorry for your addiction to clichés. My deepest sympathies!'

(I swear I'm not That Guy. I was properly socialized. Relatively properly, anyway.)

i mean

that is the essential soul of what is good and necessary about cliché, that phrase

it insulates from all of the agonies of misunderstanding of intent or delivery that can arise in just about any phrased or unphrased human interaction and delivers the absolutest clarity and intent, in the most widely recognised formula available, to people least able at that time to process much of anything except perhaps a presence and the delivery of such a phrase.

you would have to have many things wrong with you to not understand implicitly the utility of such a phrase for the circumstances imo

Yeah, ordinarily I appreciate people who avoid formulaic speech, and who can come up with something a trifle more daring at a party than "what do you do?".

But at my mom's funeral two years ago, I found I was not craving variety and creativity in what people said; if someone said something formulaic I found I was relieved and pleased.

I fear that my horribly-formed 'joke' may have provoked the very agony of which deems speaks.

I was bantering with Doc C, do u see

i got it, OL!

but glad it inadvertently prompted dmac and YMP, who articulated something important and an experience i've shared.

if you ever find yourself thinking "how can i condole with somebody in an original and non-cliched way?" then you should strongly consider fucking yourself for eternity

And really, my initial post wasn't exactly fueled by the shit being annoyed out of me. It was more the experience of hearing a word over and over until it sounds like random phonemes disconnected from context and meaning. I'd heard and said 'morning' like twelve times within a five-minute stretch and thought 'huh, humans r weird'.

"convo" for conversation

Good mourning!

oh i am the sincere person missing puns

what a turnup

Was gonna say, thought ol' treesh had gotten your login info for a sec.

I appreciated your impassioned riposte, nonetheless.

Unless you're literally talking about extraction into a liquid, don't say "infuse."

So this is bad:

In a flat world, infused with the complexities of contracting over information, off-the-shelf contracts and standardized legal reasoning and approaches don’t cut it. What’s needed are creative ways to manage strategic relationships. https://t.co/LJ3leh1szb

— Gillian Hadfield (@ghadfield) June 19, 2018

This is fine though:

This shampoo and conditioner is literally infused with love: https://t.co/sUnAt19g76 pic.twitter.com/473mYSVx8X

— InStyle (@InStyle) June 18, 2016

The bigger problem with tweet #1 imo is that it is word barf.

In a flat world, barf is critical to proactively steer our dynamic word logistic advantages.

in a flat world, apparently fields need to be leveled, despite being flat

It requires a means of responding to the very unevenness—the nonflatness—that has persisted, even been exacerbated, in the wake of the ways in which the global platform has rearranged work and resources.

Regardless of the world's shape or what it's been infused with, I feel like it would be difficult to cut anything using only contracts or reasoning. That's not how cutting things works.

For the 21st century, we need virtual contracts literally infused with titanium that can selectively cut the DNA of the blockchain.

I think we need to respond to low-hanging fruit both proactively and reactively, while answering the mail and not drinking our own bathwater. That's the long pole in the tent that will help us avoid the sharks in the water.

When our bathwater is literally infused with low-hanging fruit, we need aggressive contracts to manage the sharks that drink it.

Pooh-pooh them all you like, I think mixed metaphors are quite delicious.

are they epic bacon awesomesauce?

Careful, we don't want Mr. Fieri's attorneys filing any copyright infringement suits.

i think about ___ a lot

'Have you actually?' or 'did you actually?' is the one that winds me up the most at the moment. It's impossible to say without sounding as dense as a neutron star.

"Name a better (whatever variety of thing it is). We'll wait." <---this is a social media account manager's lame attempt at being sassy, and has never been anything else

“love too” has run its course I feel

“feature, not a bug”

"love too"? what is this usage?

posts in which a reprehensible / stupid action is endorsed, as in "love too undermine sexually assaulted women to endorse my SC nominee" (usually "too" or "2").
I kind of like them.

wow i am totally unfamiliar with this but it sounds awful

Today I caught myself starting a conversation with “you know how people like chips?”

xp nah it was one of those ones that was funny for a bit and then reached critical mass and will probably be on greeting cards next year

sorry LL I should have clarified that it's used in a satirical / arch manner, i.e. what kind of moron could endorse this view

"as a ....."

The topic on the sports call-in show tonight was "Your hot take on the Leafs"--they were especially encouraging "steaming hot takes on the Leafs."

I've hated "hot take" since the first time I heard it, and the more ubiquitous it gets, the more I hate it. It sounds so creepy. I'm not even sure of its precise meaning: is it supposed to be an instantaneous opinion without any thought, or does any willfully controversial opinion count? Or both? No need to answer--I absolutely don't care.

Just in general: why do people want to say the same things everybody else is saying? If you're suddenly hearing the same phrase over and over, that's like a big red flag: never say or write these words. But so many people just want to grab on and be part of it.