"Use other words please."

Where did I use 'scribes'? I dread to think.

Glitch is better than squirm at least. I'm too fond of 'glacial' by half.

Not that I'm about to read them all to find out, but you get the idea...

Revolutionary: I believe I was always already aware that this was a technical word, deployed by advertising agencies, to let you know that yr favourite supermarket product now came in packaging no longer cuboid, but TETRAHEDRAL! Yay.

Stunning: No it isn't. It's mildly amusing/surprising/diverting.

Ethereal: As noted over on Indie-a-Genre, this is now a corporate genre-name, acc. Tower records (i.e. like Reggae).

i was thinking of this before the thread was posted, but now i've gone and forgotten all of them and, even worse, i've probably even used those examples in recent writing.

pretentious: salvageable, actually, provided we can make the old big world use it as unalloyed praise

But yeah, sorry.

Sorry? since when did converting to glum stalinism just as your first work becomes a cause celebre (Aragon) or just attacking everyone who ever helped or admired you in print, and refusing lucrative commissions from all the major french newspapers (Breton) constitute a hack dimension? perhaps you're getting mixed up with Salvador Dali?

But •assiduous• curators of their own gallery-of-the-future post-revolution reps: which I just seriously wanna get up between sometimes, and bugger about with. I tht of including Dali, but it wd have taken the heat off the others.

x0x0

I'm not sure what annoys me more: that it has become an ugly shorthand for 'anally retentive', or that it's only used in such a limited 'slag off' way, compared with the original Freudian sense. I'm not an expert on Freud, but I seem to recall an anally retentive character being about much more than alphabetising your CD collection and making lists.

"myth" as in "the rock myth" - was about to use it in the Depeche/League thread and suddenly thought HOLD ON.

too easy and vague by half

(Kid vs scientist: who'd want to be anything else anyway?)

Dinosaurs rooled! For 70 million years!! Badly designed? To get rid of them, the cosmos had to hurl a rock the size of Birmingham — at Mexico!!!

Also (somewhat related, tho not somewhat rock-related): "FAT CATS"

I'm sorry, excuse me, just HOW is this headline shortcut going to help stir up class rage against capitalism?

Cats are great, fat cats are bigger, thus better QED.

Might as well call 'em Honey Bunnies or Wonky Donkeys...

"Chameleon" (Tanya made this point once but she nicked it off me or Pete) - David Bowie a rock chameleon i.e. ever-changing, unpredictable BUT chameleons blend into the background, so it's more like Soup Dragons-y bandwagon jumping AND the only colours they can do are various shades of dull green yellow and brown so 'unpredictable' is a bit off too.

(And this word is doubly evil if used in the same sentence as "punk rock")

Like, yeah, I can even *say* it with a nice French Canadian accent. Where did that stupid expression come from ?

Post Schmaltz should be used more often.

I vaguely remember some conservatives or media critics in the early '90s considering The Simpsons vulgar and crude because of Bart using "sucks", "blows" and other now mild-sounding language.

for sure. we were not allowed to watch the simpsons in my house for similar reasons. not because we were conservatives however

"Scumbag" had a similar journey

I remember my parents being disgusted by me saying something sucks too — it is gross! They’re right.
The line keeps moving re what is too grotesque for polite conversation. For me, for now, I cannot tolerate the idea of “raw dogging” anything.

maybe this is weird but we used it as kids to just mean doing anything naked. so "raw dogging" in the sauna meant just going in with no clothes on? similar to how bareback can be something innocuous like with horseback riding but by extension means sex w/ no protection. i guess for that reason it's not super gross to me

I only know it in the context of sex without protection and never encountered a sauna til my 30s so I can’t move past that.
I also recognize that I’m more sensitive than a lot of people in this regard. (Intrusive thoughts 🤮)

It's gross and inappropriate but I'm lucky enough not to dwell on it.

This Arwa Mahdawi article reminded me that the process is called semantic bleaching, which in turn reminded me of anal bleaching which in turn reminded me that I internally wince when people breezily say "I'm so anal", as though the word is totally divorced from their anus. There is no divorce for me!

I sort of enjoy using sexual language in everyday conversation, or at least language that is ambiguous in that regard, idk why, I like how it keeps things a little off balance. but I hadn’t really thought about the fact that some people might be actively disgusted by it tbh so thanks LL. will try to be a bit more considered

"Circle jerk" seems like its on its way to being bleached

🤮🤮🤮

It genuinely makes me feel sick to think about someone saying that casually.

And thanks tracer — I think some people enjoy that off kilter feeling you describe and others cannot separate a turn of phrase from what it represents (me).

Not to further gross anyone out, but there seems to be a pattern here wherein expressions that vividly evoke ejaculation, or once did, are prone to semantic bleaching: sucks, raw dogging, scumbag (a scumbag was a condom in mid-20th century US), circle jerk...

Also common to casually call someone a "jerkoff" - that changed within my lifetime

Yes — that’s the primary source of my revulsion. It’s not a mystery! Aggressive male sexuality intruding into my otherwise placid day is jarring.

Yeah it’s hilarious to me that the term for this is “semantic bleaching”. I suppose the entire concept of bleaching is going through the reverse process for me whereby it calls to mind much more unsettling mental images than it would have ten years ago.

I kind of do and don’t agree with you, LL? I was thinking about how full circle internet has come on certain things, like if you search “rape” or “raped” on ilx, some of the more relevant examples near the top are stuff like

Posted: 26 January 2007 at 21:31:19
this song raped me once

And that was so common on so much of the internet back then! Whereas now the tiktok influenced censorship of today, people will not type out the word rape even when it’s about literal, actual rape. I watched a video a couple of weeks ago about some manosphere prick, I forget which one, and they described some event as “he 🍇ed her and it was a known secret for a long time.” Like, grape emoji popping up in otherwise serious discussions of a difficult subject makes me feel like I’m going insane. It almost feels mocking, though the motivation is the video creator not wanting to get demonetised by the algorithms. So that leaves me uneasy, too. I don’t want capitalism and censorship to be the reason casual references died, I’d want it to be people actually being more educated and aware. Sadly…

Wrt “circle jerks”, which I do not use, I never thought of this as aggressive so much as pathetic. The term aiui is meant to be castigating overly self-referential pretentiousness, no? The imagery I have always got is a load of middle aged bearded men huffing and puffing over, oh, some topic that doesn’t interest me, and that’s always struck me as pathetic and even comedic but not so aggressive.

I vaguely remember some conservatives or media critics in the early '90s considering _The Simpsons_ vulgar and crude because of Bart using "sucks", "blows" and other now mild-sounding language.

Show itself (naturally) has a great bit on this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfgqkMoeXBo

It's a very personal thing for me -- I don't choose to have this reaction, it's wired into me via decades of intrusive thoughts. In earlier times, I would have never even brought it up because of fears it would yield retaliation, a relentless assault of imagery that would leave me feeling even worse.

Re: circle jerk, yes agreed it is pathetic but the image of men/boys "huffing and puffing" disgusts me and therefore the result is the same. An intrusion of unwanted imagery into a situation that was previously neutral.

Again, I freely admit that this is something I have to deal with in my own mind and not anyone else's problem; I'm glad that bringing it up hasn't yielded a torrent of revolting images like it would have some years ago.

Yeah I hear that and especially on intrusive thoughts though haven’t experienced it with this.

I'm fascinated by the thought of Tracer sitting in all his work meetings crafting double entendres.

Whoa I just remembered that I *did* try to say something about this once and was rewarded with a “fuck off” iirc. It was in a thread for the band Liturgy. On zing outdoors so I’m not looking it up rn.
No wonder this felt dangerous to me lol/sob yet again.

i found it Liturgy

i claimed "it's 2015, can we not?" and got swiftly told off
i am not sharing this to relitigate that situation, but to note that this is not a new thing for me. i should have remembered this.

that was an out-of-line response on their part imo.

^^^

"I don't know who needs to hear this but..."

Louder for the people in the back

"the higher-ups"

“learnings”

😬

"...on my bingo card"

"ask" as a noun

"core memory"

istg if the pop-psychology of my lifetime manifested into a physical thing, it truly would be huge pile of literal bull shit, with a bunch of very ignorantly blissed out cows standing by at the ready.

needle drop

"final boss"

stop, please

See also final form, one-shot, side quest, level up, etc

Young people (tm) seem to use video game slang all the time. NPC, bot, etc.

they've gamified my anxiety disorder

A student wrote that he had leveled up his writing skills in my class and I found it helpful tbh — to see it how they see it helps me encourage other students to try in the pursuit of leveling up.

leveled-up is useful. i don't mind these words if they're useful

'level up' makes zero sense to me as a phrase. to my brain it just means 'fix something that's wonky' and i have to make a conscious effort to interpret it any other way

NPC is dehumanising language and has a strong fashy flavour, really hate to see non-fashy people using it.

It’s a very 2026 phenomenon that the type of cunts who 10 years ago were calling libcucks NPCs now spend all their time talking to a literal NPC that they think is god/their gf/therapist/financial advisor

NPC is horrible, yes. Reflective of a solipsistic mindset, but also a reaction formation against the idea that one might not actually be as important as one wishes to be.

i get that npc comes from toxic message board culture and furthermore from video games which have nothing of value to offer to anyone, but 'people who just follow along' is a real phenomenon that deserves some kind of shorthand that isn't too derisive i guess. 'default people', 'mainstreamers', something like that. 'sheeple' if you will.

I will have to ask my daughter about the decision between NPC and bot.

That went terribly, now I'm even more confused.

coronate/coronated evidently continues to give me sub-editor's histamine prickle lol: you can just say crown/crowned and lose literally nothing meaningwise (and gain style-wise imo)

for the fussy of mind "coronation" in the sense of the official ceremony of the crowning of a king (or by extension i guess the official ceremony of the inauguration of a president ect ect) is fine, bcz a latinate term for some all-channels fancy performative* event completely with parchment scrolls and big stamped seals is perhaps helpfully distinctive

"coronation vs contest" is iffy by these pernickety standards but does have a certain rhetorical-alliterative energy so i'll allow it (not that "crowning vs content" doesnt)

*note correct usage austin fans!!