I saw an article or a wikipedia entry last week (and I wish I could find it now) that described the act of adapting certain words to create descriptors for other, similar ideas. Like, calling someone a chocoholic, even though “ohol” is part of “alcohol,” which has nothing to do with the situation you’re describing. It’s this fucked-up, twisted etymology that’s bothering me this morning.
A week ago (trust me, this is related, ) Apple held a “special event,” at which they introduced their new iMac and a bunch of other things. Afterward, they held a brief Q&A session, during which, someone asked a very stupid question. He asked “why don’t you put ‘Intel Inside’ stickers on your computers?”
Now, I won’t get into why that’s such a stupid question. It just is. But tech-bloggers went nuts. In the blogosphere….a word whose etymology allllmost makes enough sense to ignore. Anyway, bloggers quickly tagged the sticker question as “Stickergate.”
Yes, that’s right. Somehow this guy’s question relates to a luxury hotel in D.C., and of course, since the only reason any of us know about said hotel is because of President Nixon’s break-in/bugging/etc scandal, it therefore stands to reason that “Stickergate” must really be some impeachable offense committed by none other than the President of the United States. Oh, how I wish this were true.
But the fact is, of course, people just twist the language to imply scandal, be sensationalist, grab readers, and generally desensitize everyone who’s watching. The sky is falling. Wolf.
And when it comes to real scandal, nothing gets done.
THANK YOU!
I’m just getting caught up on your blogs, and I have to thank you for writing something like this and proving that you’re one of a sickeningly small percent of the American population that realizes that the reason they’re getting $3.99 sweaters at Wal-Mart and the reason Paris Hilton is on the cover of the paper more often than the crumbling environment is because this is what they ask for and those with power and money have no reason to turn of the “flickering screen.”
I’m not one of these stupid conspiracy theorists who tries to find all kinds of shit wrong with things that are easily explainable. But there’s no doubt that we’ve molded a world around ourselves that is devoid of most ethical values, any sense of accountability, and virtually all motivation. While the author of that blog may have simply been trying to mock that very sensationalism that you and I speak of, the chances are more likely that the kid hasn’t been on a date in years and was covered in Cheetos crumbs, snickering, as he posted it.
From the retarded woman and the in-flight movie (JetBlue, I’m guessing) to Miss Teen South Carolina, I’m glad to see that you and I seem to be on the same wavelength when it comes to this stuff. Believe me, it really helps that I can think of someone like you when my top’s about to blow off at work — the managing partner does something retarded and I look around me to see who else is pissed off and all I see is cows chewing with a blank stare back at me.
“So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, ‘I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!’”
If you haven’t seen the movie Network, please go buy it. Don’t rent it. Buy it. Because you’ll want to watch it over and over for about a week. The quote above, and the movie, was so far ahead of its time.
Definitely, I’ve seen Network, but you’re right on point to suggest buying it. I think that’d be good for me right now. A friend of mine quoted something recently, which perhaps you can pinpoint where it came from:
“Where is your anger? Where is your fucking rage?”
He didn’t know, and I can’t think of where it’s from. I’m thinking literary, but it might be a movie.
That’s a lyric from a song by a band called Boysetsfire … they broke up about a year ago but were around for a really long time. It’s from the title track off their album “After The Eulogy” on Victory Records. It’s highly recommended, as is their next and final album on Wind-Up Records called “Tomorrow Come Today.”
Great band, although they took an extremely leftist view of everything (to the point of trying to justify Marxist or Communist societies having some better value than Democratic). I found once I graduated from college I wanted to move as far away from the personal political label of “liberal” as possible. I find that real leftist Liberals are no better than Conservative Republicans.
That aside, their lyrics were great — tackling things like blind Capitalism, the suffering working middle class, women’s rights, and other good shit.