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

Never heard of it either, but it's terrible.

imo what's way worse than AI is how often ppl critique something now by saying it "reads/sounds/looks like AI made it"

as someone who put in his content-mine time back before mechanization (i'm talking real ehow.com SEO-game machines-clicking-on-machines stuff here i'm not necessarily being mordant about rockcrit) i haven't minded the aesthetic i discovered in myself suddenly being named (the best we had hitherto being "reads/sounds/looks like jj abrams made it")

also think tbh that the continuity of mass-produced content (its style and function but also literally its method of composition: LLMs are not alive but nor was my brain at the time, is what i'm saying) could do w some stressing in our era of unprecedence-discourse

idk i think when i'm watching a studio horror like the boogeyman and it's clear that its flaws are the result of people making it it's tiresome to read reviews accusing it of being AI-generated, it is frankly lazy as hell and says nothing

but in my example i directly named a piece of mass-produced content so maybe you're right

maybe this grievance was more appropriate for the "say other things" thread

as for me, I am still suck on "creatives" which I have a visceral negative reaction to, but, it's more complicated now, in terms of who uses it and is it an indicator of cultural snobbery to hate it?

― sarahell, Wednesday, June 14, 2023 8:02 AM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

it feels like a cousin to "vinyls" in some ways but i think it's worse, because i guess vinyls also sounds like some i can haz cheezburger type word, whereas "creatives" makes me think of someone just saying, "i'm spitballing here but what if we diversify and employ some creatives to hash out some ideas. i realize this might be a little above my pay grade so let's table it for now and circle back later...."

yeah ... like there is an exploitative context to "creatives" ... whereas vinyls (which I agree is related) is just annoying in its aesthetic way

i put "vinyls" in the same annoying but harmless and there are so many other things to be legit annoyed by category as "bonkers" and "kiddo"

"creatives" sounds like variety/hollywood reporter speak that made its way into the mainstream, casually used like some in-the-know bit of lingo. maybe that's why i don't like "showrunners" either idk.

also i think for me, working in the "entertainment industry", it does speak to the exploitation a bit, we're getting deeper here but i don't know anyone who emigrated to los angeles w/me or around the same time who wasn't inspired directly by the kind of work that's simply not produced anymore, and i know vv few who work in the wings of the industry they wanted to. they got swallowed up elsewhere, most happily, few begrudgingly. it all feels like a cheap slurry of empty disposable content now, instantly forgotten, in all areas of tv and film media. so when i hear "creatives" it kind of makes me think of idk jc chandor or chloe zhao getting sucked up into the marvel industrial complex, and makes me actually like guys like George Lucas more lol because at least when he was making his deeply flawed prequel films a couple decades back, it was all his weird singular vision, not smoothed over into a dull anonymous product aiming to please everyone at once.

that's all probably for another thread of course.

not sure if THIS is for this thread either but i hate the thing where people will explain things in a column or on twitter where it's this frenetic thing! They put exclamation points here! We all see it all the time! Brief sentences like this! And that's fine! It's what people write like now! I think they're all on drugs!

it all feels like a cheap slurry of empty disposable content now, instantly forgotten,

yeah, exactly.

'creatives' is even worse when people call themselves that... it's a made-up, bullshit capitalist term, for gods sake don't adopt it yourself

Or the 'creative class' is even more bullshit

one of the salient features of capitalism is that ensures each and every one of us will consume our full measure of humiliation in return for the opportunity to eat, including referring to oneself as a "creative" in order to prove one's capacity for self-abasement

who decides what each of our "full measures" are though? Like, there definitely is not equality in that ... some people have to endure way more humiliation than others. So by saying "full measure" it kinda erases the existence of the inequality of society.

some people have to endure way more humiliation than others

Hot Dog on a Stick to thread

https://img.franchising.com/art/articles/6607_plate.jpg

I don't know whether it's just me but I have lost all tolerance for dog-speak this month.

Not a phrase, but I really despise the 'things that just make sense' TikTok hand motion.

who decides what each of our "full measures" are though? Like, there definitely is not equality in that ... some people have to endure way more humiliation than others. So by saying "full measure" it kinda erases the existence of the inequality of society.

― sarahell, Friday, June 23, 2023 1:19 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

honestly this is a stretch

I am fine with "vinyls" because imo it makes sense for "vinyl" to transition from an uncountable noun (How much vinyl do you have? Lots of vinyl!) to a countable noun (I bought five vinyls at the record store). Previously we would have used the word "record" for the items you bought at the store, and we still can, but since that word can also refer to the album in all its tangible and intangible forms, there's a gap there for a specific countable noun meaning "a vinyl record," and the word "vinyl/vinyls" has come in to fill that gap.

"LP" comes to mind

Platter

When I was but a wee person I remember a "record album" by Bing Crosby that my parents had. It was a set of 78 rpm records, each record had its own sleeve and all the sleeves were bound together between two heavy covers, rather like a hardbound book or a photograph album. The "LP record album" on a single vinyl platter was a huge leap ahead in terms of convenience of play and easy storage.

and birthed a new art medium of course

the "vinyls" thing is a European thing I think? Like there are places (Germany maybe?) where it's actually a correct usage?

It's what my friends in France say, for sure. LP doesn't seem quite as universally useful to me since it refers only to a specific type of record.

Basically, this seems like standard evolution of language to me, and it doesn't bother me when language evolves to get clearer. What bugs me is when language evolves to get vague or misleading - like when people start writing "may" instead of "might," leading to sentences like "The plane may have skidded off the runway" when what they mean is that the plane didn't skid off the runway.

I’m sure there are old German gits going “Schallplatten! They’re called SCHALLPLATTEN!! Bloody kids…”

Verdammte kinder!

Auf das Geld

"Vinilos" in Mexico also

Now that I think about it, it's the countries where you have a word like discos or disques that could mean records or CDs where a word like vinyls is especially useful to make the distinction

CDs are records, I'm firm on this point.

Agreed, the music on a cd was, generally, recorded in a recording studio. A record producer and recording engineer were most likely involved, and probably a record company. Someone probably pressed a button that said "record."

like when people start writing "may" instead of "might," leading to sentences like "The plane may have skidded off the runway" when what they mean is that the plane didn't skid off the runway.

This usage doesn't really bother me, and it's usually clear from context, but my favourite example is "a seat belt may have saved Princess Diana's life".

i have to say the runway example offered strikes me as at least as confusing the other way

theres twenty better ways of saying it that "may have" but "might have" is 19th on that list imo

vinyls is definitely an American English thing too, I hear it constantly from the under-30 set. it's origin is likely just the not-unusual process of a mass noun being used as a count noun. for example, my dad would never tell me that there are beers in the fridge, but my friends do.

same for waters in the fridge
as usual f hazel is otm

i think an important part of the "vinyls" thing is the fact that collecting records has an important community function and also touches on aspects of preserving / passing on musical heritage. and so there's a dynamic of learning from the elders and getting initiated into the lingo and terminology.

"disco é cultura", right?

xxxp Neither "may have" nor "might have" sounds right in that context. "Could have" seems much better to me.

May have = it's still a possibility.

Might have / could have = speculation, with subtly varying degrees of uncertainty depending on the speaker. I am not sure I use them interchangeably, but I would need to listen to myself in a thousand contexts to know.

But "may have" is definitely wrong for Diana's seat belt. Hitler or Elvis MAY HAVE faked their deaths? That implies the possibility that they're living happily together in Bolivia.

Option one: "Diana may have been saved by a seat belt." = we don't know that one didn't. Possibly her death and funeral were a sham and she escaped unharmed, to get away from the spotlight. She is happily retired from working at a day care center in Brisbane, and she has a nice garden.

Option two: "Diana could have been saved by a seat belt." = this is more like, "had she been wearing one, she could have survived, but we don't know for sure."

Option three: "Diana might have been saved by a seat belt." = somewhere in between. You COULD interpret this as a speculation like option one, but that's a stretch. I would be more likely to interpret it like option two, where it means something like, "in an alternate universe where she was wearing a seat belt, there's a chance she would have survived."

i think you sound very certain there about how those very specific meanings are to be derived and i just dont, i suppose, have that confidence in the specifics there

Elvis and Diana are living happily together in Bolivia.

the may be but they might not be

They could have been.

The correct usage is clearly "Diana might coulda lived if she wore a seat belt"

I reckon

people who couldn't find on a map until yesterday

darragh I am simply speaking about how I interpret these phrases in my own dialect and within my own speech community. Yes I have studied linguistics a tad and have a degree in English/philosophy but that's not relevant because I am really just trying to answer the question that was asked.

So:

I may have had sex with your mom: I am not definitively saying whether it happened or didn't, but there is a possibility that it happened. To be honest, we were both pretty drunk.

I could have had sex with your mom: I had the opportunity. But this phrasing tends to indicate that I had the opportunity and declined.

I might have had sex with your mom: who knows? We were both pretty drunk.

I would add that the third sentence, as you pointed out in your earlier comment, can also mean something more like this:

If, at some point in the past, something had gone differently, I might have had sex with your mom. This is a purely hypothetical past-tense scenario, and it's clear from context that I did not have sex with your mom.

That's the one that tends to get confusing when you replace it with "may."

hey all let's get off moms.

cause