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

normalisation

we get it. you didnt want him to win.

i quit sugar

lmao darragh

getting really sick of "pearl clutching" and "hand wringing."

"coastal elite"

actually not really. more just "coastal elite" combined with "pearl clutching" and "hand wringing" and "soul searching"

man alive otmfm

normalisation

we get it. you didnt want him to win.

https://twitter.com/rmkf/status/803561189355700224

i can see the reasons for why people are using the word but many others just caught it like a cold.

xp they have just become shortcuts to conveying that you are too cool for school. "OH ALL THESE PEOPLE PEARL CLUTCHING AND HAND WRINGING ABOUT THING I DON'T EVEN THINK IS A BIG DEAL"

my problem with "normalization" is that he is going to be the president. It is virtually impossible not to normalize a president to some extent. You can live every single day of the next 4 (or god forbid 8) years acting like the world is now upside down.

Every word that migrates from the academy to the mainstream is basically intolerable.

'the academy'

before ppl stop using pearl clutching and hand wringing other ppl are going to have to stop doing those things

nah every instance of it you encounter is basically

"this thing is bad"
"wow hysterical"

now youre just pearlcl....... OH SHIT

pearl-clutching also seems GENDERED. Here's why that's problematic.

I don't like the way a lot of Americans say "loser" as an insult. It sounds as if people are mocked for simply being unfortunate rather than being a waster or someone who never tries.

I'm wearing (and clutching) pearls right now, and that's okay.

RAG, you might be referring to a particular subset of Americans there.

The gendering of pearl-clutching is one of the most bothersome things about it! Used on women it's just straight up sexist, used on men it's classic gay-baiting, like "fussy" "frilly" "prissy" etc.

quit strawclutching doc

my problem with "normalization" is that he is going to be the president. It is virtually impossible not to normalize a president to some extent. You can live every single day of the next 4 (or god forbid 8) years acting like the world is now upside down.

yeah exactly.

Awful looking cgi has been normalized.

strawcucking

(observation, not annoyance)

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/marmalize

The revolution will not be martinized

But emails!

'Trump won because racism'
'The world is different now because technology'
etc

^
hate this formulation
ie: basically the omission of 'of' and the combination of smugness and laziness involved.

that's my single favourite formulation of the past few years

I have a friend who uses 'dumb', 'stupid' and 'retarded' all the time on Facebook. I realise he's using these words figuratively - 'people voted Trump because they're dumb'; 'Theresa May is retarded' etc, but it really winds me up and I kind of want to say something without coming off as precious or self-righteous

nah -- come off precious and self-righteous

"stupid" is not really in the same league as "retarded", nor is "dumb" to a lesser extent.

alfred otm, 'retarded' especially is beyond the pale. i used to say it and regret it enormously.

there's a point beyond which i think it's absolutely fine to tell even the people closest to you that they're using some fairly crap epithets and should stop.

yeah, obvs 'retarded' just isn't acceptable any more. i think i used to say it too and this guy just never got out the habit. 'stupid' is fine but sometimes it's more about context. 'this idea is stupid' is fine, but he over-does it sometimes and interchanges the three words: '[person in the media] is dumb'; '[public demographic] are retarded' etc...

it also lacks flourish, far more fun to call someone a feckless tosswank

yeah and it's just this constant undermining of people in general. he revels in misanthropy so it's very much in character. might have a word next time though.

Seems like it's not the words he uses (which are lazy and unimaginative at best) but the dismissiveness of his message. Takes a pretty arrogant person to publicly dismiss xyz thing by simply declaring it "dumb" or "stupid"

Best of luck getting through to this miserable person!

What is 'Shitposting'

it's a metaphor

This needs a parallel thread that covers online usage exclusively. Why is "impact" as a verb such a problem, while "Spotify" as a verb is okay?

What is 'Shitposting'

The collected works of Morbius, basically

xp software lends itself naturally to verb conversion because it's something you use to do other things so "can you please use spotify to play vampire weekend" is more intelligible and brief as "can you please spotify vampire weekend." "can you use google to search for pictures of naked mole rats" "can you google naked mole rates." in general actually i think this thread is wrong bc the only criteria for whether a word is good is whether it's a. intelligible & b. terser. i understand there are aesthetic objections (tho aesthetically speaking brevity is the soul of etc) and also sometimes these things represent bad thinking but I can't think of good ideological reasons to oppose "impact" as a verb. "I am going to have an impact on this project," as "i am going to impact this project," maybe you don't like using impact to mean having a strong effect on something but once you accept that definition (I'm not dragging out my OES) who cares if it's a verb now?

oh we lost that battle years ago

my theory: people didn't know whether to use "affect" or "effect" the same way you hear "John and myself went to a movie" (i.e. the speaker doesn't know whether to use subjective or objective case).

if anything using it as a noun tends towards passive verbs and using it as a verb is instantly active = maybe that's the objection? it's a sneaky end-around strunk/white?

I have a bigger problem with "impactful."

I'm reading Huey Long by T. Harry Williams. It's a well-regarded book and all, but Williams keeps saying things like "Huey Long effected the state's policies...."

He also uses lowercase letters for parish names, as in "Union parish", "Orleans parish", "Jefferson parish", etc. It's annoying.

English is very forgiving of shit like that. once my brother played the word "unrewaxed" during a scrabble game and I had to allow it, because of course it's a word, even if it was a word no one had ever used until the moment he laid it on the board.

There's also the fact that 'Spotify' seems to be a nominalized verb, albeit a made-up one. If you accept it as a proper name, the verb use seems inevitable.

the same way you hear "John and myself went to a movie" (i.e. the speaker doesn't know whether to use subjective or objective case).

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, 17 January 2017 13:20 (thirty-five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this riles the living shit out of me. 'myself' is a reflexive pronoun with one clear purpose that doesn't include being jammed at the beginning of sentences.