Category — Language

I have long blamed our 21st century plunge down the gullet of potty-mouth on Beavis and Butthead. The dialog – if you could call Beavis: “You monkeyspank.” / Butthead: “Shut-up fart knocker!!” dialog – was rude, coarse and well, bone stupid. Note that I carefully selected a bit of repartee that did not include the all-but-ubiquitous (I almost wrote all-“butt”-ubiquitous, hehe) bunghole, cornhole, schlong, boner, etc. Our conversation is, I fear, forever changed by these two asshats. See, I did it. The art of the elegant insult is dead.

I am now looking to assign blame for what I see as another 21st century fall from grace: the epidemic of insincerity, the virulent outbreak of inauthenticity (not sure that’s a word, but now it is), the wholesale inability to be genuine, the thick, gooey layer of pretend niceness that is being slathered over everything.

Well, not everything. Political rhetoric – while spectacularly insincere – is certainly not ooey-gooey nice. (An aside: Remember “nattering nabobs of negativism”? Now that was a great Pre-Beavis/Butthead insult uttered by a politician, the crowning glory of the inestimable Spiro T. Agnew, Nixon’s Veep.)

Back to “inauthenticity.” What do I mean by that? I mean the inability to be real, to either say what you think or not say anything. Being inauthentic means not just hiding your true feelings but pretending you feel/ think otherwise. It means obscuring your true feelings, your authentic response, under a veneer of happy-smiley-talk: the super-perky delivery of a faked compliment, the “love” button response to a post you actually haven’t read; the sending of an email with “congratulations” followed by the requisite two or three exclamation points….

…when really you (choose one, or several): don’t care; don’t know anything about it; don’t think the accomplishment is actually much of an accomplishment; don’t really like and/or respect the person; have, in fact, been trying your hardest to secretly undermine this person for years.

News flash: This pretend niceness is not fooling anyone. What it is doing is legitimizing emotional dishonesty (if you are the fake-compliment-giver) or casting doubt on the honesty of all responses (if you are the receiver). I am not suggesting we start insulting people. I still believe in “if you have nothing good to say, say nothing at all.” I am suggesting that sincerity should be a pre-requisite to compliments and congratulations.

If everything is a “good job!” then nothing is.