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People start using cliched buzzwords because they hear other busniess-y people using them and they want to talk to those business-y people in their own vernacul

People start using cliched buzzwords because they hear other busniess-y people using them and they want to talk to those business-y people in their own vernacular. But I think, deep down, almost everybody using these buzzwords hates the buzzwords. Yet we end up converging to this terrible prisoners-dillema equilibrium where all the business people start code-switching to talk like buzzword-assholes and hate themselves for it but they do't realize we could all just agree to stop doing it and we'd all be happier.

Finnucane 2y ago
They want to be first-movers in the buzzwords space.
bitsinthesky 2y ago
It’s like parroting the king in the royal courtroom but for the 21st century. Look what happened to Spain as a warning, next thing anyone knew, one day their whole country woke up talking with a lisp.
- Y_Y 2y ago
  The Castillian lisp is only popular in some regions of Spain, and did not originate from people mimicking a king. It's still a better lisp than CL though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_Spanish_coronal_fricatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_Spanis...
munificent 2y ago
> they want to talk to those business-y people in their own vernacular. I don't think it's about using their language for understanding. I think it's because they want to send a signal "Look, I'm like you. Let me be in your in-group." It's a tribal signal. > but they do't realize we could all just agree to stop doing it and we'd all be happier. The problem is that everyone wants to be in the high status in-groups, but the high status in-groups don't want to let all the rabble in. This is a perpetually unstable equilibrium. Once any given high status in-group signal becomes widely known by lower-status people, it ceases to be a useful signal for actual high status people (and, worse, eventually becomes a signal for "low status person trying to look high status") so must be discarded and replaced with a new one. Once you realize it, this phenomenon is everywhere. It's the engine that drives almost all of fashion. It's why buzzwords and jargon come and go. It's where home furnishing and interior design fads stem from. It's why so very few things in our highly social human lives are ever really timeless.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
griftrejection 2y ago
No, I'm sorry, there actually are true believers. I think some people just have trouble countenancing the idea that maybe some of the people we've given all the wealth and power to really are just dolts. This tends to have an unraveling effect on people's personal beliefs.

Finnucane 2y ago

They want to be first-movers in the buzzwords space.

bitsinthesky 2y ago

It’s like parroting the king in the royal courtroom but for the 21st century. Look what happened to Spain as a warning, next thing anyone knew, one day their whole country woke up talking with a lisp.

Y_Y 2y ago
The Castillian lisp is only popular in some regions of Spain, and did not originate from people mimicking a king. It's still a better lisp than CL though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_Spanish_coronal_fricatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_history_of_Spanis...

munificent 2y ago

> they want to talk to those business-y people in their own vernacular. I don't think it's about using their language for understanding. I think it's because they want to send a signal "Look, I'm like you. Let me be in your in-group." It's a tribal signal. > but they do't realize we could all just agree to stop doing it and we'd all be happier. The problem is that everyone wants to be in the high status in-groups, but the high status in-groups don't want to let all the rabble in. This is a perpetually unstable equilibrium. Once any given high status in-group signal becomes widely known by lower-status people, it ceases to be a useful signal for actual high status people (and, worse, eventually becomes a signal for "low status person trying to look high status") so must be discarded and replaced with a new one. Once you realize it, this phenomenon is everywhere. It's the engine that drives almost all of fashion. It's why buzzwords and jargon come and go. It's where home furnishing and interior design fads stem from. It's why so very few things in our highly social human lives are ever really timeless.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

griftrejection 2y ago

No, I'm sorry, there actually are true believers. I think some people just have trouble countenancing the idea that maybe some of the people we've given all the wealth and power to really are just dolts. This tends to have an unraveling effect on people's personal beliefs.