Words, usages, and phrases that annoy the shit out of you...

Four Words: Use Other Words Please
"Use other words please."
Commonly used phrases that inexplicably bug you
Most irritating cliche/phrase/expression
"Taking Things to a Whole `Nother Level!"
words that annoy
Words that should earn the author a slap
PROVERBIAL and other tip offs to poor writing

-- caitlin (wpsal...) (webmail), December 23rd, 2003. (caitlin)

Oh yes, yes yes. I second that one. And the people who say it, say it over and over.

I also have a horror of people who write prolifically in all caps.

This is true.

But, this is a topic that should be dealt with routinely and harshly... the only way we can correct the language and suppress it's organic growth is by exposing and banning every new usage as it occurs... Isn't that what the French do?

Also: 'fridge,' girls who refer to each other as 'girl,' proactive...i'll be back when i think of more....

'poetic justice'. Used by the lazy to describe all 'justice' the speaker approves of, instead of a particular type. The adjective is rendered meaningless.

Agree re 'bird' for woman/girl, and lament its threatened return. Stinks of 'I'm being un-PC, where's my medal?'. Also the C-person uses it, which kinda ends the argument.

Wait, huh? Fridge is the thing you put food in, whats wrong with it?

I'm picturing him saying things such as "Would you like me to remove another beverage from the refrigerator for you, whilst we watch some association football?"

Everyone British says fortnight. I even looked up what crenallated means to check if it’s something we are all trying to appear and well I can’t decide now.

if speech were battlements, crenelations would be a useful feature

sounds like someone's got a case of the fortnights

Hardly. I'll never be forty again!

I know it has almost certainly been here many times before, probably I've posted it myself, but continue to be disappointed at how many people feel it is acceptable to ever say/write "monetize"

what would you say?

I would say "stop treating your art like it's a MLM scheme"

A free Spotify account is 'art'?

“All free Spotify accounts are quite useless” – Oscar Wilde

Sorry, not following you, this is something I come across all the time in podcasting, imagine it is the same for any "creatives"

xp

Well it’s used in other contexts too, is the point, I guess. Monetizing users is a phrase endemic in tech business. On art, I suppose it’s an uglier way of the old “making a living out of it”. Biz should try that on for size. How do we make a living out of these free Bumble account holders?

Right. Where I come across the word 'monetize' it's in the context of getting money out of subscribers who have signed up to some sort of free tier. The accepted business model for basically all of media publishing is to grow your subscriber base as big as you can and then figure out how to get money out of them. You don't really 'monetize' art - you sell it, or rent it, or whatever. You monetize audiences.

I mean, this is all also bad, this is why every app pretends to be free then bombards you with ads which you "accidentally" click on. And of course I know that this is the fault of capitalism and lack of regulation rather than individuals, but it would just be better if people were less gung ho about going along with it.

"creatives" is way way way way worse than "monetize" -- though in the context of art, it makes me think ... "make it like monet" which then leads me to the relations between impressionism / modernism and contemporary capitalism, as opposed to industrial capitalism, and then I think of how many posters and totebags exist and have existed with pictures of Monet's artwork ... whereas "creatives" makes me just feel like vomiting.

Yeah, it's really unfortunate when people refer to themselves as 'creatives'... sir, you've been co-opted by yourself

Yeah, it's really unfortunate when people refer to themselves as 'creatives'... sir, you've been co-opted by yourself

― Andy the Grasshopper, Tuesday, September 7, 2021 12:10 PM (one minute ago)

yeahhhhhhhhh though some of them aren't very creative, or at least, they make me want to be as un-creative as possible if being creative means being like them

I always think of that one scene in Hollywood Shuffle.

lay off the creatives, they're just trying to generate some content

When people describe themselves as "creatives," it makes me think they know nothing about being creative.

i mean... literally "creative" is my job title so i feel very seen here

"Kieth"

sorry, this is "words, usages and phrases..."
think you're looking for "people..."

When Youtubers say 'let's get into it...'

“Smash that like button”

that one annoys me too because I struggle with imagining it done literally -- maybe it's just me, but I realize a lot of these terms in this thread that annoy me, the reason they annoy me has to do with the relationship between the term and their literal referents, and to some extent the connotations of the referents.

if you smash it, the button will be broken, there is no correlation with how vigorously you press the button with how subscribed you are.

exactly! why would you want people to break the like button? Then they would be unable to give you future likes? And then your influence would take a nose-dive

also sounds uncomfortably like a certain kind of man saying "I'd smash that" - now there is a truly disgusting phrase.

I blame Smashmouth

hey now!

lol

getting a bit annoyed with self-proclaimed leftists adopting Xtian/GOP moralist words like "good" and "evil" to describe people and ideas.

Don't know if this has been covered yet, but influencer and influencer-mimicking ads that begin with a person saying, "Hey guys..."

Shut the fuck up.

lol otm

"wellness" and "mindfulness"

is there a specific context that is the most annoying, or just in general? ... I agree btw, especially when you add "healing"

Also 'detox', unless it's in the context of recovering heroin addicts.

mindfulness is a perfectly simple and useful term that can be understood by nearly everyone without much effort and once it is understood it doesn't need to be talked about very much, if at all. it just means 'paying careful attention and not getting distracted by stray thoughts or shiny objects'.

I work in a community mental health agency and both words (though not "healing") get used many times a day. I understand "mindfulness" to be a very specific concept - more or less what Aimless wrote, but specifically relevant in contrast to the long Western tradition of mental health being intellectualized and cognitive, removed from the physical experience a person is having in the moment. It does have a distinct meaning that explains the use of the word. Not to justify the bazillion apps and initiatives that try to capitalize on it's trendiness. "Wellness" may not be the best term for this, but it also gets used somewhat specifically to refer to those activities that enable a person to live a healthy lifestyle but that are not especially medical, clinical, or therapeutic. So the weight loss support groups and things like that that are run by our center are part of the Wellness Program. It is admittedly a mushier category and some things they have included like painting and board game groups make it mushier. Though I fully believe having hobbies that don't explicitly make you less well is a good thing that many people in this country seem to have a hard time generating.

Beware the wellness industrial complex

kinda

one of the things that has probably become trite at this point, is corporate culture using "wellness" as a way of signaling that they care about their employees, yet conversations and practices about "wellness" don't include things like paying living wages, allowing for flexible schedules, and getting rid of workplace dynamics that foster misogyny, racism, etc.

Going WAY back to Giclee, which I found when searching for inkjet as it's something I'm dipping my toes into, just wanted to clarify a few things. Yes, the term is totally annoying and pretentious. Originally it meant "fancy inkjet" to try to differentiate but more often than not people are moving on from the phrase. Tom Ashe, who's book Color Management & Quality Output, which is the most up-to-date and well written book on the subject, has a whole chapter about this, including various options, and I think they mostly settle on "Archival Pigment Print".

Fact is, all of this printing is technically the same technology as the shitty clogged inkjet printer on your desktop. So the terminology exists to just point out various factors, half of which ideally imply the skill that goes into it, and half of which imply issues regarding the technology and paper choice, i.e. using the best quality inks and papers free of brightening chemicals. In other words, you printing some art out on your desktop canon or epson is just an "inkjet" print, printing the same art out on a 11/12 color inkjet with the best quality inks onto archival quality paper that in combination will last 100+ years, is "archival pigment printing". I've just been using the term "museum quality" when talking to people.

Also many of the cheaper printers use Dye based ink, which ironically has a larger color gamut, but is prone to fading, while the most high-end machines use pigment based ink, which isn't.

I bought some clothes online and now my timeline is being spammed with ads for things phrased like "The Morning Trouser", "The Slimline Jean" etc. This construction probably felt classy at first but is now so proliferate it reeks of posturing

Sounds like you're being served your jeans on a silver platter by a French waiter; "Monsieur, ze twill overshirt, s'il vous plait"

For some reason the singular trouser, pant, jean, chino rankles more than the highfalutin catalogese. No one says these things, in American English anyway:

That's a nice trouser you're wearing today.

Wait a sec, I'm not wearing my pant.

Where did you buy that jean?

Crap, I've spilled red wine on my favorite no-iron chino.

An instagram the other day was boasting about impeccable “shirting”

In the teal colorway?

That's a ruddy good trousering you have going on there