That word, again?
Posted on February 9, 2004
Filed Under /dev/null/ | 123 views |
Here’s some terms I would like the media to stop using immediately. It’s time to get creative again, start exercising your brains, jump off the buzzword bandwagon and stroll through your thesaurus for a bit:
Weapon(s) of mass destruction. Just because it can kill someone doesn’t mean its a weapon of mass destruction (unless you’re truly being scientifically literal and then anything that destroys any form of mass could be considered a weapon I suppose). Instead, try being specific. Lets get back to such golden oldies as “nuclear stockpile”, “chemical weapon”, “biological agent”, “neurotoxin” and the like. Even better: name them specifically. Remember the good old days of SCUD and Sarin? “Weapon of mass destruction” (or WMD if you’re really cool) is de rigueur to be sure but truthfully, its continued use is a bit lazy. I now take the presence of the term “weapon of mass destruction” in a media dispatch to mean: “someone in authority told me something about something bad but I’m too bored/deadlined/sloppy/apathetic/uncertain to check further into it so I’ll just parrot this line. It’s not like you, the dear reader, will notice the difference anyhow.”
“Weapons of mass destruction” has become one of those terms who’s use causes everyone who hears it to nod their heads knowingly yet when asked “so, which WMD in particular?” elicits an “uhh, well, you know, those ones they’re talking about there” response, followed by some wild hand-waving and then a glare of suspicion.
Terrorize. True terror is a rare thing, an incapacitating, deep, primal fear. Being scared, startled, frightened, feeling slightly amiss or ill at ease, these are not feelings of terror. If something bad happens and someone is put out by it, they haven’t necessarily been terrorized, honest.
Merriam-Webster defines terrorism as: “violence (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population or government into granting their demands”. Note the conditions. Thus we find that 15 yr-old hackers, regardless of their 1337 skill, are not capable of terrorizing anyone. Case in point: High School Terrorized By Hacker. The weather also cannot terrorize anyone regardless of how much snow falls or how slippery your sidewalk is. It’s a bit like calling everything “the best” - it loses it’s punch, becomes meaningless, becomes, once again, the safety-net of the lazy.