The Polar Express

In a rapidly polarizing world, there is no tolerance for centrists, they say.  Apparently that polarity has hit opinions and experiences too.  We classify as all our experiences, all that we consume as either amazing or incredibly disappointing.  Because we go in with no or low expectations or heightened expectations.  Nothing is good enough (not that it ever was).  Like a stereotypical Asian parent judging their child's achievements, what could be okay is disappointing.  And what has been deemed acceptable by aggregate keeps sliding down the disappointment scale as time passes.  We may be the sum total of all our experiences, but the sum average of all our experiences comes up shorter than its parts (there is a sumif, some/if, if/average ifaverage excel joke in there, but I can't be bothered right now).

   Good gets moved to a different category.  If a movie is just good, it will be streamed or viewed while doing chores.  Theater is only for greatness - how dare the anticipation of greatness disappoint.  But hype follows Netflix too.  So now there is disappointment in the good to decent even there.

  They say good art or anything memorable generates discussion.  Discussion has been replaced by debate.  And for debate, we assume there needs to be polarity.  Especially if there is polarity towards one end, our middling experience compel us to pull the polarity down the other end.  Ironically, the net average of the polarities would bring it right back to where it originally belonged (good to decent.  I didn't do the math - I never do the math).  But decent for everyone is not the same as averaging out to decent.

It is like we cannot let something wither away in average-ness or mediocrity.  We will either immortalize them, or turn them into rotting zombies of what they are.  Merely good has no place in this hyped up, amped up world, always waiting to be blown away or shocked and repulsed.  Another aspect, is our inability to compartmentalize.  We cannot absorb the bad and enjoy the good.  We feel compelled to make an overall judgement, ignoring the individual aspects.  It causes a dissonance in our collective memory.  If society is a collective organism, it is suffering from extreme cognitive dissonance.

What the Frack

Overuse of a resource that upsets the landscape and changes the balance.  NOPE. This is not about fracking.  No this is not about overexposure to not immediately visible dumb tropes propagated by the marvel movies.  This is about language.  Linguistic Fracking is what I refer to as the overuse of hyperbole and exaggerations to spotlight a thing we deem important.  Not everyone, maybe not anyone else - just we.

  It is one of the bigger human follies - The greatest and grossest of our fallacies (see what I did there?) is that we assume our opinion is of the utmost importance and must be broadcast to the world at large, at once.  YouTube, Instagram but especially Twitter thrive on this basic human flaw.  And we all know what fracking does.  For the benefit of the few, the ground is rattled and shaken for everyone.  For the benefit of a few people sounding cool or important for a few seconds, language for everyone takes a hit.

  Let's extend my awesomely (another word fracked out of its mind) ludicrous (another fracked word) analogy - eventually we start borrowing words outside the original language - for emphasis and gravitas (stealing other resources when fracking has peaked).  Eventually we have several people using similarly urgent sounding language for the most mundane of statements or (horror of horrors) opinions.  All trying to fit into limited alphabets, like street hawkers on crowded streets shouting to call attention to their wares trying to drown out others selling THE EXACT SAME THING.  Hmm.  Makes me thing which is how the whole exaggeration cycle probably started.  Guess when you don't have different content, you change the presentation (shhh... that is a consultancy secret!)

Anti Word

There is a new kind of word out there.  Put the word out - about the word (cue Surfin Bird parody).  I call it the anti-word.  It is something that shape shifts and transforms like a ninja-chameleon-contortionist to mean whatever you want it to mean.  Like a comic book character invented and reinvented over the ages - until it is an amorphous template - mirroring the thoughts of the reader and creator.  But like a shitty comic book character.  A tier two nameless avenger, not a Justice League powerhouse.

Feminism is one.  Anything not rooted in male comfort is feminism.  People assume it to mean everything negative that is being propagated by "neoliberals" to curb male freedom, tagging it to all sorts of negative connotations. Speaking of Liberals - Liberal is another word taken to mean everything that is against harsh, stark, practical reality - someone easily offended and living in an idealistic bubble.  It's like a marketing term - twisted, wrangled and mangled to suit any purpose.  The idea is to cloud judgement so that there is no right interpretation and everyone can be simultaneously right and wrong.  In a post fact world, truth and facts become hypothesis. And like a guilty till proven innocent type of perverse hypothesis, until proven incorrect, it is taken to mean everything contrarian to an opposing ideology.  So liberals want to take away all freedom and be completely socialist hippie commune.  And feminists want all men to be chained and castrated.  This is what they would have you believe.

This is weird when you think about it.  Having something equally right, having something to be a hypothesis constantly in need of validation by hard facts is something liberals are more prone to do.  But that is the issue, I guess.  The facts, when you look for them aren't there having been quickly converted to opinions and hypotheses.  but broad spectrum, one size fit all cannot be words rooted in true meaning.  Hell it can barely apply to an internet broadband plan.  Which is why I often feel we need to go back to one or two syllables.  Use basic words.  when you start throwing around terms which others don't understand - but more importantly that WE OURSELVES can't explain properly - things tend to get out of hand.  Like a game of Chinese whispers played in a hurricane hit by a tsunami in a town of fishmongers.  Or like the third act of a transformers movie.  Completely out of hand, totally incomprehensible and everyone goes away with a different interpretation but similar headache.