Flowers and pearls - Sarah Pally's column. This time: "Dinosaur bullshit party"
Sarah Pally, a linguist and partner at the agency Partner & Partner, takes a close look at (advertising) language in her column «Blüten und Perlen.» This time, she discusses, among other things, «overused terms combined with vague ideas.».
Bullshitting sometimes feels like being at the Oktoberfest-Wiesn: overused terms combined with watery ideas and formulations like on a rollercoaster, absurdly overblown phrases jostle with each other, the odd Kaulitz, er Kalauer, cavorts around - and everyone finds each other a bit horny.
A kitschy fever dream from which, at best, only scraps of meaning remain, together with a queasy feeling in the stomach. Absolutely not a feast for the senses - but drinkable!
"Purpose-driven growth", "sustainable disruption", "agile resilience" .... Either makes no sense at all or is so unclear that it is no longer tangible with the best will in the world. But it doesn't hurt anyone and it's not even a lie - it would have to mean something. So the stuff goes down like nothing. And it easily fills pages without having to say anything perceptible. Ideal stuffing material for webpages, annual reports, claims - you name it.
The fate of the good guys
What has happened? Why have really good terms suddenly become bullshit - where is the tipping point? "Sustainable" and "agile" and all the others were once young, fresh and really strong, they were different from the others and triggered something. That's probably why they ended up in the heavy rotation of the copy-paste society and were so polished that you can no longer feel anything when you read them.
We always pretend that it's because of the terms that they are essentially bullshit. But they're not: being bullshit is the fate of the good guys. And sometimes you can tease this out in context, giving the term a brief appearance in the spotlight in a clever, surprising formulation feature.
R.I.P "Sustainability"
But new bullshit terms will be brought to light and initially enjoy sudden attention as unexpected stars, only to be brutally dropped. For some, it happens very quickly, such as "edgy", while others last quite a long time, such as "sustainable" - nomen est omen. That's why these bullshit dinosaurs in particular deserve a little more respect: they really got to the heart of something important for once, and they still dance at almost every wedding.
But even these terms will be forgotten at some point. Perhaps forever, perhaps with a bit of luck they will be resurrected by the Ubernext Gen. In any case, they have served well: Thanks to them, millions of people have reaped approval and admiration without ever actually having formulated anything clearly. Thank you and R.I.P Sustainability and Co.
