What’s in a name? A whole lot of arse, if Ben Mansill is doing the talking.
Words are awesome. Good for so many things, it’s words and pressed shirts that separate us from the beasts. And words are hardly set in stone. We can muck around with them, making them mean new things, combining them and making up all-new ones.
Here, at the cutting face of the technology wedge, driving through society like a machete through a pavlova, words are buzzing. We’re lucky like that. You and me and the whole cool crowd. Living in the future, as we do. Not only do we get toys-to-die-for served up on a platter, but we also get to shape the Ways Things Are for ordinary, less sophisticated folk.
Now, there have always been colloquialisms, always will be, cobber. And yeah, it’s probably true that language shapes thought patterns – and vice-versa. So it’s as natural as swimming in the buff that we geekgensia are taking the world by the hand and helping it across Communication Road.
Because we’re into technology, we’re smarter than normal people. Heaps smarter, probably. Benevolently, we use those smarts to help less fortunate intellects get by. We don’t do it because we care, we do it for karma points, just in case God does exist. And a part of that big responsibility is helping normal people get their thick heads around stuff that isn’t very explainery.
We do it by giving them words.
They’re into it, too. Dumb people usually know they’re dumb, and wear that stigma as a badge of honour as much as a cry for help. They call themselves noobs, because we tell them to. When (not ‘if’) they screw up, they get flamed. Unless they’re wearing a flame-retardant suit (there’s no such thing, but we tell em there is, cos it’s easier to teach a monkey dangerous tricks if they think there’s a safety net).
It’s already somewhat rooted. Billions of noobs around the world think that any kind of portable music player is an iPod. The change is upon us. Sometimes is nice, sometimes ugly.
We think it’s neat that everyone is Googling. Such a funky word. It wouldn’t have mattered what the company was selling, Google was always a winner. Texting is one of our shames. Stupid bloody word. The cringe is worst still with blogging, and peaks with podcasting. What the hell sort of wannabe cutesy word is that? Ridiculous. Photoshopping is also just wrong. Adobe should pay us 5 cents every time we say it.
Big hits are words we’ve given that carry a self-contained meaning. So much so, that common folk have abused our gifts. The process of getting pretty much anything is now downloading. Unless you’re cool, in which case it’s leeching. Huge difference.
Thanks to us, and our kind, people don’t mail anymore, they message. Well of course they’re messaging, it just doesn’t sound very romantic. Where’s the style? Too many of these new words are fuxxored. Had a great success lately? Well, you’ve been Slashdotted. Pork baloney. I don’t want to be Slashdotted – I wanna lay down a Monsterkill! Don’t like it? Go get Tubgirled, ya tard.
But we need to work harder at this. We need to create a legacy which future generations will thank us for. Technology isn’t going away. Not on my shift. It’s time to act. If we leave it too late, the momentum will be too great to change, even for role modelling trend setters like us power-geeks.
It’ll be easy. Just make stuff up! Next time you see someone from Sales struggling with some bit of technology (not Outlook or their mobiles – Sales are more skilled at those than us, but don’t worry about it), go up to them, point to whatever they’re fiddling with, and explain that they need to Fuzzmah their Cockengirdle. Then show them how, and be creative about it. Have some fun, and send them on their happy way. That very night, they will tell his mates, straight faced, that they should recalibrate their Nobulator to prevent cheesy gak custardisation.
It’ll be great! We’ll have a ripsnorting world where all the words are Arsepoundingly Boobrific. So kick it all up a notch and make a moniker. Coin a phrase. Do it for the kids of tomorrow, save them from a dark world of podcasted blogs and give them the righteous munting they deserve.
Issue: 137 | June, 2012