there's this particular style of writing that really annoys me - it's like the buzzfeed reddit kind of writing that's very quippy and clunky and i feel like it's taken over political messaging as the liberal version of trumpspeech. words mean stuff. the law matters, actually. this. so much this! i associate this kind of writing with the 35-50 demographic
age is such a distinguishing factor with the way people write online. I'm trying to think of the younger demo version of this: maybe like
normalize being X, Y is valid, if you do Z DNI /srs. I- asgsjfkdkshsgs
the older version is just trumptalk which is well documented
I was blown away when I learned that Thai has like five registers of speech. It took me a few years to realize that English has at least that many we just pretend we don't for some fucking reason. One of my worst habits is I tend to blend registers, principally for my own amusement. I was one of those annoying fucktards who randomly breaks into accents during conversational speech until I went to a couple voice actor workshops and realized that's what all voice actors do (and it's really fucking annoying). I bring this up because it's not just straight useless pandering, it's mirroring. The interesting thing about that clip is it's 1988, attempting to paint a kitschy, overdone portrait of 1985... as seen from 2015. I saw it in theaters in 1989 and I shit you not - at least three people around me went "whoa Max Headroom!" because we, as a culture, had completely forgotten he existed. Looking back now? Yeah I mean if I wanted to say "80s" I could hardly do worse than "Ronald Reagan, Michael Jackson, Max Headroom, Memphis Design and Diet Pepsi, conveniently one of the biggest sponsors of a heavily sponsored trilogy of extremely '80s movies." Pandering? Pandering is mirroring and mirroring is ephemeral. "Buzzfeed Reddit kind of writing" is always du jour. You can deduce the age of popular Reddit posts to the month it's so meme-laden (not just visually, but textually). Here, this one is like ten years old but also evergreen: But also a meme which means I needed to make it from scratch because nobody is referencing Sudden Clarity Clarence anymore. You are reading ephemera and noting its ephemeral nature. You are seeing it in political speech because GenZ is suddenly relevant. And it annoys you for extremely obvious reasons. I think we can agree that given a choice between "ignored" or "pandered to", pandering to GenZ is heartily preferable. I will merely point out that the results are entirely predictable when the youthful, online register of internet ephemera is spoken by people who have opinions about golf clubs. Speaking in someone else's register takes practice, and you generally need a good reason to do it. Know what will make you feel better? This is from a book review in The Atlantic. And this is from a book review in the Atlantic. One of those passages appears in the Jan/Feb 2023 issue. The other appears in Nov 1946. Not all speech is ephemera.
The author is strangely credulous in his incredulity. Some of his assumptions about animals could have come right out of Ernest Thompson Seton. His picture of the chivalrous Cro-Magnon males covering the retreat of their females and “roaring out defiance" and his vignette of a playful Pithecanthropus teasing a buffalo and “enjoying the frustration of the charging monster" are worthy of Edgar Rice Burroughs. And his proposition that (a) we ate plants before we ate meat; (b) women are more conservative than men; and hence (c) women eat more salads for lunch than men do simply leaves you silent on a peak in Darien.
I seem to be the only college-educated person left in America who hasn’t read Don DeLillo. Sometimes my mother will read something I’ve written and say, a little balefully, “You should really be reading White Noise,” suggesting that this gap in my education, specifically, is egregious and foolish. She’s probably right. Any writer with an interest in probing “American magic and dread”—to borrow a phrase from the novel—is probably in conversation with DeLillo, whether or not she knows it.
"Read that again, let it sink in, and louder for the people at the back" Echoing Goobster's thoughts - it feels like this was bound to happen to you. I am increasingly confused by the style of other generations. I still feel like being a millenial means I'm young, but I'm not. Not anymore :( Quippy and clunky sounds about right. Meant to be quick and clever, but also somehow 'evocative' yet easy to replicate. However I associate it with those under 35. Those approaching 50 I'm yet to encounter ever talking or writing like that.
I'm not comfortable assigning the style to an entire generation. I have receptionists in their early '20s and have been shown (by them) their conversations with their friends. They converse the same with me, primarily because I definitely work to break down formal barriers. There's definitely a register of communication preferred by younger people but it isn't what quats is talking about. "Read that again, let it sink in, and louder for the people in the back" is David Wong-era Cracked run through Tumblr and spat out for Twitter. Its its own register, the patois of the "Woke Left" to use a pejorative. I find the more I encounter it, the deeper I am into a conversational circle that is rarely challenged by conversations with outgroups. And, like most privileged vernacular, it really comes off as hollow when adopted by outsiders. David Wong, a white guy pretending to be Asian, is 47. Much like so much of GenX thought was written by 'boomers, like the political anthems of Millennials were written by Gen X, the vernacular of GenZ is largely influenced by elders. The tricky part is recognizing that leaving it the fuck alone is the graceful move. Boomers and Millennials suck at this.
I hear ya ... but it's also just sour grapes. Older generations never like the way younger generations speak (this is documented back to ancient Rome), and making comments about how the younguns' form of communication is degrading/inferior/wrong is your job now. What I hear, when I see comments - like "THIS!" or whatever - from that generation, is that they share a LOT more in common than I did with my peers, because they are constantly online, viewing the same content streams, and have a constant, ongoing "conversation" with their peers that is a series of quick touches and confirmations, rather than long conversations. This friend group has seen the same things coming across their social feeds, and can see their friends interacting with the content through likes, or upvotes, or shares. So they are already - and always - in conversation. So all they need to do is express quick support - a click or a "THIS!" - to remain in the conversation with their peers. For me, personally, I don't view the younger generation(s) as separate individuals, but as a swirling pool of shared ideas. I have this liberty because I really don't have any "friends" in this demographic (except for the children of my friends, who I have a distinctly third-hand relationship with) to measure by. So I see them online, I see them interacting in the way they are comfortable doing so, and how their style of conversing has changed from my peer group. And honestly ... from time to time ... when everything has been said, and I just wanna bump it ... I'll post THIS! as well.