Buzz phrases distorting reality

[Turtle]

impacted > The announcement impacted the market. > :eek: :naughty: NO! There was and is no collision. Just say no to 'impacts.' :Glasses:

 

resonated - The announcement resonated with my views. > :eek: :naughty: NO! There was and is no vibrational frequency attributable to a view. Just say no to 'resonance.'

 

:D

[Turtle]

impacted > The announcement impacted the market. > :eek: :naughty: NO! There was and is no collision. Just say no to 'impacts.' :Glasses:

 

resonated - The announcement resonated with my views. > :eek: :naughty: NO! There was and is no vibrational frequency attributable to a view. Just say no to 'resonance.'

 

:D

 

Did these buzz-words strike a chord with anyone? :D

[Buffy]

Maybe its a Silicon Valley thing, but is anyone here familiar with Buzzword Bingo? It was really popular for a while: some daring soul would put together a buzzword sheets laid out just like traditional bingo cards (there were many Excel macros floating around to generate them) before a meeting and hand it out to those "in the know" (or rather "out of power and ill-motivated"!). The words--many mentioned above--were usually out of the dust jacket of the latest management fad tome: enablement, paradigm shift, bias for action, go to market plan, etc.

 

Funnest part was figuring out the signal that indicated that you had won, since you couldn't really yell "bingo" in the middle of the VP's sleep inducing monologues...

 

Ah the days before the bubble burst,

Buffy

[Boerseun]

Personally, I think the usage of buzz-words such as the above is simply a defence mechanism used by them to hide their own inadequacies and incompetence. So, they'll spew reams and reams of these non-sensical crap at you, because, after all, they firmly believe that bullshit baffles brains. And if they can't impress you with their non-existent technical knowledge, they'll make up for it by inventing new words for existing concepts.

 

I know this for a fact: When I was still in the corporate world, the biggest users of buzzwords were the biggest idiots in the management corps. The real leaders, the real brains behind the operation, were those managers who cut to the chase immediately, saying what they mean, calling a spade a spade. If it wasn't for them, the company would've sunk long ago. Pity is, they're few and far between. Interesting observation - managers who don't use buzzwords tend to have less brightly-coloured neckties than those who do use buzzwords.

 

I'm sure the biggest users of buzzwords lie in bed at night staring at the ceiling, in a cold sweat, repeating the mantra: "Oh my God I don't know what I'm doing they're gonna fire me I need to pay the mortgage oh my God I need to pay the cars little Johnny must go to a private school and that costs money and I don't know what I'm doing they're gonna find out and fire me... Ahhh, heck - I'll just invent some new words! Hey - that looks like a peanut! I like peanuts. No, wait, I am positively appreciative and extremely partial to the sense experience brought on by masticating on the reproductive pods of the peanut plant. Yeah - I need to find the latin name for the peanut plant, that'll stretch it some more..."

 

I think they're all idiots.

 

Cut to the chase,

Boerseun

[LaurieAG]

I know this for a fact: When I was still in the corporate world, the biggest users of buzzwords were the biggest idiots in the management corps. The real leaders, the real brains behind the operation, were those managers who cut to the chase immediately, saying what they mean, calling a spade a spade. If it wasn't for them, the company would've sunk long ago. Pity is, they're few and far between.

 

What you describe is a corollary to the 'Peter Principle'.

 

The Peter Principle MK II

 

Once you have promoted all of your competents to their highest level of incompetance you must change your management philosophy from top down to bottom up, because the people at the bottom are the only competents left in your organisation.

[Michaelangelica]

Google "weasel words' for a site on the debasement of language.

 

This is an article on Bush's own 'Devil's Dictionary' .

AlterNet: Devil's Dictionary of the Bush Era

EG

Given that we were (by administration definition) at war, it should have been self-evident that those we captured in our "war" on terrorism would then be "prisoners of war," but no such luck for them, since their rights would in that case have been clearly defined in international treaties signed by the United States. So the Bush administration opened its Devil's Dictionary and came up with a new, tortured term for our new prisoners, "unlawful combatants," which really stood for: We can do anything we want to you in a place of our choosing. For that place, they then chose Guantanamo, an American base in Cuba (which they promptly defined as within "Cuban sovereignty" for the purposes of putting our detention camps beyond the purview of American courts or Congress, but within Bush administration sovereignty – the sole kind that counted with them – for the purposes of the Cubans).