Buzzwords. Corporate Culture’s Greatest Monstrosities.

I was just over at Patrick Richard aka The Hard-Nosed Project Manager’s blog. He’s got quite a rant going over a recent podcast on “How to be a Successful eXtreme Project Manager” that apparently chewed up 1 hour, 5 minutes and 16 seconds of his life. He’ll never get that time back, and in commiseration I’ll be having a drink for him later.

I’ve written about my thoughts on buzzwords and jargon before. Mostly, I hate them, although sometimes my hatred is more of a low-grade dislike. What I hate most about them isn’t so much the fact that the term’s been coined, but what people do with it after.

You see, even though they know on some level that it’s wrong, people feed buzzwords. The buzzwords have as little meaning as they always did, but it doesn’t stop people from nurturing them through repetition or using them wrong (and then repeating someone using them wrong). It’s not unlike a child surreptitiously feeding Cheetos to a zoo animal despite warning signs all around. To demonstrate perfectly my feelings about buzzwords, a new (very cheesy-looking) horror movie trailer is currently making its rounds on the web. Play the video, and while you watch, pretend it’s about the creation of a buzzword. In that light the dialogue is perfect (and also makes the video very funny IMO).

I present you the darkest side of corporate culture’s creative endeavours. I present you….
(Buzzword) Splice.

Imagine the inside of a buzzword lab.
The terror is unspeakable.

 

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