Matthew Epshtein
...is ranting about Buzzwords
Woah, meta. To be clear, I mean something very specific by the word "Buzzword." I do not mean a technobabble term, nor am I referring to the thing that happens when someone uses a word originating in academia incorrectly. What I mean by "Buzzword" is a word (or phrase, but they are usually Buzzwords strung together) that has neither meaning nor value in the way it is used. There are words without a real meaning, but with a value, mostly jargon used to refer to broad concepts in spaces that generally only warrant an understanding of their broad function, such as "The Administration" in the context of US government (it's difficult to define exactly who+what this refers to but you need to be able to address a given President's tenure using a noun) or "superstar" in the context of sports (again, this is a slippery concept, but viewers should have a general way to talk about a really good player, or something approaching that). Similarly, there are words with a real, exact, and well-defined meaning, but without much value to most people, a category almost entirely inhabited by technical/academic terms. In the intersection between the deficits of those two categories, you get the dreaded Buzzword. I see Buzzwords like this most prolifically used in political spaces, wherein the user of the Buzzword seeks to implicitly communicate some vague message, often boiling down to "move fast and break things," but does not seek to get a handle on that message or justify it in a meaningful way.
I will justify my "thesis", if you can call it that, with a few examples. These will not be exhaustive, because that's impossible, but I hope that it can give an idea of what I am talking about:
People are quick to use this term as a bludgeon against large technology corporations (what you would think the meaning of this particular Buzzword is), but oftentimes for reasons which undermine the term's meaning. Oftentimes this Buzzword is used along with several others ("deep state", "MSM", etc. come to mind), and this further takes away from its meaning. If you were to ask a user of this Buzzword what exactly it means, they would give you some normatively loaded sequence of words, usually boiling down to "tech company with policies I don't like." At that point, it's not hard to realize why I call "Big Tech" a Buzzword. I will, though, grant that if this Buzzword really meant something akin to "large technology corporations", it could be valuable, especially when talking about regulations and things of that nature, but its status as a descriptor of an incoherent and ill-defined group makes it lose all but the most superficial value.
Similarly to "Big Tech", but now broader still. When people use this Buzzword, they most often mean to express the sentiment that there is a broad group of institutions (large corporations, news media, bureaucratic agencies, etc.) which are all colluding, if not conspiring, to do something in society which benefits them all, which is a great evil in the mind of this Buzzword's users. Again, instead of a clear description, this Buzzword is used to argue a point. Users of this Buzzword will gloss over the numerous incongruities in their use of it, such as the ever-changing nature of who exactly is the establishment, especially when it relates to institutions that are not American. In discourse about COVID, users of this Buzzword might claim that China, Russia, the US, etc., collaborated to deliver a vaccine that harms people, despite the fact that each side developed their own vaccines, and that there would have been an obvious incentive for the Chinese or Russians to loudly dispute the effectiveness of the numerous American-made vaccines, something that largely didn't happen. Confoundingly, they will also claim that, on topics such as the War in Ukraine, Russia and its institutions, for example, are far outside of "the establishment", with some going as far as to claim that Russian institutions are actually engaged in a holy battle with "the establishment" for one reason or another. As with the other Buzzwords, this one carries neither meaning nor value.
Almost the mother of all Buzzwords, this term has been used like no other in socio-cultural discourse. Originally, it was meant as a signifier of a person who is aware of the injustices in our society ("awake" to them, thus "Woke"), and who seeks to fight against them. This definition, though vague and still normatively loaded, is acceptable. However, this is not how this Buzzword is used at present. Users of the word "Woke" now use it as a pejorative, despite the nonsensical nature of that kind of use—"anti-establishment" types would seem to be the most "Woke", as they argue that much of the institutional foundation of our society is rot. This, naturally, is not an obstacle to the users of this Buzzword, and it most closely now resembles a stand-in for "Leftist," just without any of the grounding that makes the term "Leftist" useful. The deeper meaning of this buzzword can be summarized as follows: "anyone that advocates for social change in a direction which I don't like is Woke, which makes them bad." This follows the pattern of the previous two examples, and thus the term "Woke" is, in no uncertain terms (pun intended), a Buzzword.
It seems like a lot of discourse nowadays is unproductive. I am nowhere near the first to say this, I know, but it is worth mentioning that polarization does not just make people more willing to vote/agree with/fight for extreme causes, but that it also makes them less willing, and thus less able, to engage with those who disagree with them. The people who I see using Buzzwords are predominantly those who take an "anti-establishment" point of view, those who believe that the system is broken, and ultimately, those who are unwilling to provide solutions that don't border on fever dreams. Those people, who used to be willing to engage in meaningful discourse with "the establishment", who were critical in shaping reform, who envisioned a better future that was real, are now enthralled in a cycle of vitriol against whatever they wish to blame for their misdeeds. This is not to say, of course, that the institutions of American or global life are perfect (that would be silly), but I instead want to express that those who seek to totally abandon them are, at their core, unable to put into distinct and meaningful words why they want to do so. This is because of the simple fact that many in the "anti-establishment" camp are driven by a desire to feel emotional vindication or experience catharsis against whatever ills, real or imagined, they feel that "the establishment" exhibits. Those in that camp choose an ultimately emotional reaction to those ills, rather than a logical or analytical one, and as a result, their thought leaders choose to use words that elicit emotional reactions, rather than standing for concepts which can be analyzed in a reasonable way. To those thought leaders, then, I say: STOP!