Babble On & Off
Monday, July 18, 2005 at 2:40AM in Business, And Why It's Evil Mr. Irresponsible isn't naive. I know that business doesn't really see me as an individual, a living person with cares and sorrows and an itch between the shoulder blades that I just can't reach. Business sees me as a source of raw nourishment, much as the alien invaders saw Earthlings in "War of the Worlds," or as teenagers view their parents. And this is okay with me. For example, I have no beef with the fact that the people who beam TiVo service into my home consider me a unit of data, which exists in part to be aggregated and sold to advertisers. Does this really harm me in any material way? I mean, TiVo and I are a summertime thing. It's not like I carry a spiral notebook on which I've scrawled "Mr. Irresponsible-TiVo" and "Mr. I. TiVo" and "Mr. I. & T 4-ever." And should the day ever come when TiVo has to choose between me and, say, marginally better 4th-quarter pre-tax earnings, well, I know that'll be the day I see the last of TiVo. All I'm saying is, I'm a big boy. I can read the Terms of Service as well as anyone.
Where business and I do part company is in its use of language. I don't understand why the people who speak for business insist on talking some ghastly hybrid of English and Fortran. Take this piece from today about TiVo's introduction of -- oh hell, who cares what it's the introduction of? Some new subscriber-parsing capability in their software or something. I think it allows users to click a key on their remotes and get instant access to product information. It doesn't matter. I'm not going to do it. You're not going to do it. Is there really anybody sitting home watching a time-shifted episode of "Six Feet Under" who actually thinks, "Say, I would like to be sent product information on the new Hypodermicon 6000 TransDermal Pudding Delivery System from ConGlomCo! Honey, hand me the remote!" No, of course not. What matters is the way TiVo's Level-4 PRbots describe their new gewgaw:
"We have seen the need to provide greater entry point to this advertising space ... to support enough advertisers concurrently," said Kimber Sterling, director of advertising and research sales.... "Advertising is a substantial growth area," Sterling said. "It is not a material revenue for us yet relative to our overall revenue picture."
Why do the people in press releases always talk like they've been struck by lightning? Is it some sort of badge of insidership, like a secret decoder ring? The English language, and by that I mean the off-the-rack version spoken by you and me and everybody we know, or at least by anybody you'd want to hang out with, was good enough for F. Scott Fitzgerald and Arthur Miller and Joseph Mitchell. It ought to be good enough for Kimber Sterling.
The good news here, of course, is that corruption of the language is pretty much the only large-scale corruption that business hasn't managed to pull off. Most people don't talk like PR drones. But Mr. Irresponsible is a purist about some things. I like my bourbon straight up and my English the same way. So the next time some yutz with an MBA and a Blackberry tries to talk to you about synergism, why not do as Mr. Irresponsible does: Smile pleasantly, nod agreeably and throw the switch in your brain that allows you to tune their babble out in favor of something more authentic. Me, I like an endless loop of Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse," which has the side benefit of making the inside of my head sound like a Daffy Duck cartoon. You feel free to go ahead and pick your own, though.
Reader Comments (2)
Kimber