The two most conformist, misused and overused words of our day.

I guess everyone knows — from hearing them or reading them in text — that the most overused and misused words of our day in pop culture and for airline video cults are: awesome and amazing. Nearly everything these days is described as “awesome and amazing.” In reality, very little is awesome or amazing. But the most mundane things are described as such. Both awesome and amazing have completely lost their original meaning from overuse, misuse and abuse. Because it’s rare that anything is authentically awesome or amazing.

Rather than using the words: good, excellent, fine, exceptional, superb, superior, outstanding (as some examples). Instead “everyone” has to use the same words “awesome and amazing” in order to conform and fit in. We certainly do live in a very conformist society, lacking any originality or individuality whatsoever, particularly in speech. These days, the most ordinary, dull, boring, uninteresting things are described as “awesome” and “amazing.”

Someone can record planes landing and taking off all day at LAX and that’s called “awesome and amazing” by a bunch of idiots. Yet corporate camera crews video record news and other events every day and they’re never described as “awesome and amazing.” You’re not anybody if you don’t conform as sheeple and use both words to describe anything that is really NOT awesome and amazing in reality.

Then in the corporate world and with the corporate media, the most overused words are: significant, significant, significant. Is anyone else so tired of hearing that word over and over? It’s one reason I don’t listen to any news or talking heads from the United States of North America, which is mainly where one hears this stupefied, dumbed-down crap. I get my news from the EU, where there is less of this. I also can’t stand to listen to most people parked at microphones in the US. I find them damn annoying. They enjoy mispronouncing words from other languages and international words (they’re not prepared in other words and they don’t seem to care that they’re not prepared). In politics, these people parked at microphones refuse to use people’s official titles or the official names for some places. Some of these people speak so fast, choppy, clipped, unmusical and have to say “like” every other word. Dumbed-down trash. People could be saying “important” or “considerable” instead of significant, significant, significant. The book called the Thesaurus is obviously dead these days, since in order to conform everyone makes sure they use the same conformist language. Then there’s impact, impact, impact rather than saying: effect or affect. Maybe people use “impact” because they don’t know the difference or when to use effect and affect correctly. Then there’s “dramatically” which is used to hype things. Also “deadly.” And some people use all of them in one sentence: Yes, you’ll hear, “that will have a dramatically significant impact, if you will.” Of course there’s the “if you will” add on to sentences, as if to say “if you will allow that.” Well you’ve already said it so I guess it has to be allowed, no? Doh. Stupid.

People’s speech and writing have become pretty bad and very wordy, which is odd because when I trained we were taught to avoid being wordy. Not these days.