Often, on reading posts or unsolicited emails, I find myself astonished at the pure indecipherability of the sender’s or author’s subject. I mean, appreciating I’m hardly the brightest button in the box, but with increasingly frequency the jargonalism really defies understanding.
Its oeuvre (it definitely feels like it is one. In fact I can imagine there’s a recording artist out there working on this. I hope so) can best be found nowadays on job postings, where the poster’s recoil from Getting To The Point feels almost visceral.
Sometimes, even when we’re past the ‘more..’ scroll-y link bit, the thing being searched for or asked of evades capture. You’re lucky if an actual trait or skill-desired manages to surface from the ‘change making transformative ideation lead capability dynamic ambassador’ until you’re three paragraphs deep and full fathomless.
There seems to be thing with Actual People to want to write like robots. Ok, I get that lots of people write for the algorithms to snag, but what we end up suffering through is a kind of verbal regression to the mean - where what’s being said increasingly sounds like something everyone else is saying. And with decreasing effect.
What we think we see (or read) is somehow new (or somehow ‘change’) but all we end up offering the reader is something far less meaningful. Where using words for things - like ‘ambassador’ - were extremely unlikely to be part of a job description (apart from ads for actual ambassadors, clearly), when peppered into JD’s for jobs in marketing (for example. Nothing against marketing nor you lovely marketers :) it diminishes the meaning.
In effect, far from sounding valuable, it becomes meaning-less. Like when you go out for a great meal but the second time you go, it’s not so special. Some things are “difficult to repeat exactly the second time around.” And they should be so, otherwise we end reverting to mediocrity. So repeating something that sounded extremely interesting, out of context, simply sounds normal. Well, not normal. Just odd.
What’s a cure? Sometimes the best things are best simply said. Lessness-ness is a very powerful means of making sense and at speed.
I’m all for that sort of regression to the meaningful.
