Disruption

There are words that rise and fall in popularity in our world. Several years back with the beginnings of the Google book project you could search in one of the offerings of Labs to see a word's popularity graphed by year. I am certain I once posted about this and that you can still do this but as I compose this (I'm trying to set a record for saying "this") post from my hi-jacked and out-of-date Firefox browser that presents much content in Japanese, I'm going to forgo looking for a proper link out of, well, laziness.

If you're a reader of this here blog from time-to-time, you'll note that, from time-to-time, I get incredibly (and probably unreasonably) frustrated by such excessive use. In the past that word has been "awkward" and oh how I'm aware that this is one half of the title of this blog. In the past that word has also been "sexy." Neither has completely disappeared, but hey once you vent to your blog I mean where do you really go from there? Seriously, if the entire world hasn't taken notice based on the 30-50 hits I tend to get, then I just don't understand. Maybe I need to learn a way to be more...disruptive?

Okay nail, I'm going to hit you over the head here. Disruption, disruptive, and any other use of this word —I'm so disrupted I can't even think what all of the forms are and I'm deciding not to Google on my predominantly Japanese browser —have got to stop being used. Now it's true, it's a function of what news you focus on, who your friends are in social media and, once you've seen a word, how much you choose to focus on it (there's a scientific term for this phenomenon that I also won't Google — go brain!), but I promise you, DISRUPTION is everywhere. It's the buzz word for how to be entrepreneurial and innovative and attract attention to change or, um, disrupt, the status quo. But most of these things do no more to disrupt the status quo than but to place disruptive, disruptor, and so on more firmly in the ether. Because hell, as I'm sure I've said, and at any rate I'm sure you just know anyway, when you use a word over and over its emphasis, its power, is diminished.

If I wanted to distract from disruption I could cite the prevalence of overly-enthusiastic language storming through the web in the form of sites like Upworthy that contend that everything happens to simultaneously be the most mind-blowing, earth-shattering, life-changing shit in history. The only thing there might be more of than canned enthusiasm on that site is share buttons. It's the other side of the Epic Fail coin, a movement that was nice and eponymous. Ordered regular, got decaf! Not epic fail. And look, I get it, we're about click-throughs on this Internet — which I know well from not getting a lot — but holy hell, how about a little gradation? Think if every day I took the biggest shit of my life? Well shouldn't I realistically start to worry about my colon, my diet, and perhaps the size of my asshole?

I apologize for the use of profane language in the preceding paragraph, but should it not be expected in a place where griping is listed near the top of the list? So hey, let's disrupt things. Let's stop calling everything disruptive. Let's look at a thesaurus. Bollix? Upset the apple cart? These are excellent. You can even abbreviate that last one as UTAC. I can't wait for that to be the name of some new agency! UTAC that one right to the bank...

Damnit Timberlake

Why did you have to go and declare that you were bringing sexy back? I realize that JT is not directly to blame (neither is Sacha Baron Cohen)but, as I was alluding to in my last entry, overuse of the word sexy is, well, one of my gripes. Everything is sexy. In an excerpt from the Columbia Business School alumni magazine Hermes (note: link not provided because for whatever reason the article from which I am quoting is contained only in the print release, and is excluded from the online version and the downloadable pdf – pages 20-25 literally omitted), there is an article on "The Future of Advertising." I'm citing this article rather than many other blatant misuses of the word "sexy" because the advertising world is extra hip and savvy and up-to-speed on buzzwords, so you can usually look to them for the first transgressions of word over-use (see also: Chrismukkah).

In said article Shelly Lazarus, big-time marketer for Ogilvy, says "it's always more sexy to report calamity than continuity." This is not to say this is incorrect word usage. Take, for instance, this example given by the Dictionary application that comes with my Mac: I've climbed most of the really sexy west coast mountains. Quick question(s). Have you ever a) heard anyone use sexy this way and/or b) wanted to smack them for doing so. I really don't have a problem with Shelly, just that word, especially because Shelly is Columbia Business School class of '70, making her, even were she a prodigy when she graduated, old. Do you want to hear your grandparents calling things sexy? Probably not.

Bottom line: sexy is permissible as a joke adjective or descriptor of someone you find sexually attractive. Examples include:

"Wow, I never noticed Jennifer's butt before she wore those jeans to casual Friday; she was looking sexy." This is doubly allowed because of semi-colon usage.

Casey: Wow, did you see Jake's abs when that bucket of Gatorade got dumped on his head, rendering his shirt see-through?
Rachel: Ohmigod, I know, and the orange drops coming off his hair was so HOT!!
David: Don't you mean sexy?
Rachel: No, because I'm talking about the drops coming off his hair, which was hot, but you're right, Jake is sexy.
David: At least we can all agree on that.

Robocop vs. Terminator: Half-man, half-cop meets Cytodyne cyborg from the future…with sexy results.

In the 80s, this may have passed for sexy. That is just one reason the UK is great. Parliamentary practices are another. In closing I just want to take this opportunity to wish everyone a happy Groundhog Day.