From the stupid is as stupid does book of wisdom …
NEW WORDS
… or Old Words with new importance!
TROLL
This one’s easy. It took me a LONG time to figure out what it meant. In a nutshell, it’s someone who doesn’t agree with you. It can be about blueberries, and your standoff will be dramatic and important. You don’t belong in the raspberry forum if you talk about blueberries. “Troll” is a perfect representation of the illusion that opposing opinions are bad. It’s a sin, and that kind of thinking will drive us further down the rabbit hole.
NARCISSIST
A narcissist is someone who loves himself. They tend to be aggressive and passive, leaving victims in their wake with no apparent remorse, and with constantly dwindling friendships. Up until a few years-ago, this word was at home in a psychology or medical book. Today it’s the perfect word to use for someone who identifies as a victim (complaining about their narcissist), and the word has seen a big surge in popularity. The website Quora has been inundated with this word.
GHOSTING
The Internet has made it easier to connect. As a side-effect, it’s also easier to disappear. Ghosting is “rejection without any concrete explanation as to why you’re being rejected.”
ECHO CHAMBER
Like it when people agree with you? To hell with trolls! An echo chamber is where no trolls exist and everyone’s on your side, a place free from disagreements about blueberries or politics. Oddly, although trolls suck, a complete lack of trolls in an echo chamber is thought of as a place where people hide. There’s no winning this game.
CANCEL
It used to mean what it means. Now it means death to the person I don’t agree with. Very specific stuff.
LGBTXYZ
I just wonder what letters will be added in the future. It’s an endless soup of uniqueness we don’t need to know about. Proud gays who used to organize parades don’t lean on monikers to defend their rights; it’s the downtrodden and misunderstood who feel the need to organize, label and advertise their personal quirks. Who benefits from the soup is unclear.
WOKE
This used to be a good thing. Now it means you have opened your eyes. But what it REALLY means is you’ve opened your eyes and identified those people who disagree with you, called them out by name and disrespected them. Well done, woke mobsters! We may have been much happier, though, when we were still half asleep.
GASLIGHT
Technical term for being psycho. Popular these days. Medical News Today says “Gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse where a person or group makes someone question their sanity, perception of reality, or memories. People experiencing gaslighting often feel confused, anxious, and unable to trust themselves. The term gaslighting derives from the 1938 play Gaslight, in which a husband manipulates his wife into thinking she has a mental illness by dimming their gas-fueled lights and telling her she is hallucinating.”
SQUAD
Not a very friendly way to say “friends and associates.”
RINO
Republican in name only. It’s renewed popularity is a by-product of the dangerous Trump administration, and the former president’s annoying habit of pointing out bad things other people do. Dissension in the ranks is the new normal.
GUCCI
Yes, poor people favor this use of the word “Gucci,” an overpriced handbag, to mean something good. Who’da thunk.
TWERK
A new mainstream term for dirty dancing. Thanks, Oprah.
53X
This is new to me. Use this important new word instead of the confusing, misleading, offensive word “sex.”
LMIRL
More critical lessons to learn here. This one stands for “Let’s Meet in Real Life.” From the folks at Very Well Family, where they stress “It’s important to educate yourself about common teen slang so that you understand what your teen is talking about – both online and in-person.” Sometimes they’re talking about … getting rid of the phone and computer, dropping the tweets and fake names … and, dangerous as it may sound, meeting face-to-face!
FINALLY
I searched Google for “phrases black people use.”
You can’t do that.
Well, you won’t get an answer from the good folks at Google.
Instead, you’ll get wildly ludicrous articles about shame, unfairness and, of course hypocrisy. You’ll get overly-touchy article-writers who may not yet have reached puberty themselves, telling us things like this:
“Eskimo” comes from the same Danish word borrowed from Algonquin, “ashkimeq,” which literally means “eaters of raw meat,” and “When we refer to an entire group of people by their perceived behaviors, we trivialize their existence and culture. Let’s start using the proper terms, like Inuit.”
REALITY
What have we learned?
That master bedrooms are racist?
No. Despite the heroic efforts of CNN.
We’ve learned humans have an intrinsic sense of humor, which offends a few people. Nothing more.
Oh, and you’re not supposed to call an Eskimo an Eskimo.
ONE MORE TWIST?
Maybe I searched wrong.
Black is a bad word. You have to say “African American.”
But even if you do that, you’re probably still wrong.
Apparently, the LGBTQ (sic) community is blatantly stealing the casual-but-clever vernacular of the “afros,” says the dim-witted Kit Radley, who boldly describes marginalized people with dark skin as “blacks,” while posing so hard he/she/it has lost perspective. Radley, finding a day in the sun writing on the famous Interweb, sheds light on the issue with possibly the stupidest comment I’ve ever read: “When other communities, like the LGBTQ community, start to use phrases from AAVE as informal buzzwords that are sometimes seen as “less intelligent” than standardized English, it steals part of a culturally significant language from Black people while simultaneously pushing the narrative that AAVE is not as articulate as standardized English.”
That’s an amazing, imagined conclusion.
Imagine, changing a perfectly good language we’ve been using since the fifth-century with hopeful but mostly random phrases that are expected to be correctly honored by some people but not others … and losing articulation. Imagine others enjoying using the phrases without asking permission first of the group that invented them. Imagine the horror of pushing the narrative that the phrases sound stupid by saying the phrases out loud.
Not to mention, I didn’t know we capitalize the word “black,” and it’s notable LGBTQ was not in my spell check on my Mac. I had to add it.
We have work to do, people!
It’s as Simple as Black … wait a minute …
Actually, I’m not sure if we’re supposed to say Black … but if you do, capitalize it! I guess! I can’t say if this goes for the other Colors.
(probably not)
Ultimately, I think of Forrest Gump, who became famous by acting dumb while oozing wisdom … He had a much smarter point of view.
“Stupid is as stupid does.”
Let the chips fall where they may.
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Mark Urso
mark@markurso.com
A_Candle_Lit