Andre Hartslief
IN PASSING, I AM IN TO YOU
That’s UBER creepy.
In passing, have you noticed, only us guys ever say them? It’s always in capitals too. And the other frig-gen one’s “Whatever” it literally gives me the trots! I’m not alone in this, as a Poll recently found ‘Whatever’ to be the most annoying word, for all of five years running and then there’s this overused relic which is the word ‘literally’ which is literally overused to the extreme!
The use of the word seems to be the word choice of the mullet sporting fraternity, who just like to chuck it in the mix to give their sentences faux pizzazz. and what slays me, is that most people don’t know, or certainly seem not to know the difference between ‘literally’ and ‘figuratively‘. Anyway, the point of stringing words together, is that they should give VALUE, deliver value, provide huge value, to the reader or readers of the script. It’s newly used, out of balance, while the true character of the word was intended to describe the balance in our hearts and love in our lives, which is what truly makes our world go ’round, do you agree?
Everyone in business, or at least the ones in the writing business, which is my business circle, say it. “If you want folks to buy your product or service, get known for over-delivery on value.” Deliver massively on that “V” word and all those UBER creepy words, whatever, will literally disappear. You know it’s lost it’s shine when the word has become so abused, that in its original form it sounds cheap and meaningless, so much so, that people are now having to change it to Val-yew or Val-you and Val-e-u to give it credibility.
Perhaps it’s just me. I’ve often thought about writing a story on my blog — about arguing with my wife about the poor value of food in supermarkets and if I can’t find a way to somehow convert those negative points into something usable and valuable, in my own business, I worry that my business too, may not “deliver value.” I like to mentally substitute any negative words I come across, into words like “cheddar cheese” when I hear them.
And that’s so not true. Just from a blog/ newsletter perspective, there are many other ways to provide value, worth, cream cheese, Gouda, whatever you want to call it. I get value from you if you can get me teary-eyed, make me laugh, get me all riled up, freak me out, give me goosebumps, make me salivate, gets me fed up or gets me distracted for 5 minutes from my work, make me feel motivated to do something great, make me feel I’m not worthless or tell me something I shouldn’t know about.
You even deliver value to me by being annoying, like when you post selfies with “sucking” lies about how great your job and your life are, how deeply grateful you are for the caring staff of Bongo Bongo airline’s First Class Lounge. I will even happily hate-follow you to the ends of the virtual earth since that’s what real value is for me. Even when you do something radical, like writing a one-sentence article with bad punctuation, it makes me think, “Wow, did you really do that?”
Well, it is agreed, generally, that there are over ten thousand useless words in the English language, but a great many of them come in handy in framing whatever agenda people are up to– good or bad.