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Thursday, May 08, 2008

Buzzwords, Clones, and Me...

Ed had a post about the fluff around simple, common-sense truths from which I must I ask: What might have sparked this commentary?

He answer's this question in part in his own passage: that he seems to be dragged to seminars around buzzwords / buzz-phrases, ergo providing fodder to contemplate over, ergo his posting. On the other hand, it potentially leads to a mind-bending philosophical journey into the nature of clones.

I, like Ed, find those nuggets of "truth" (buried deep, deep within the massive stool-pile which is the self-help / buzzword seminar) both enjoyable as well as potentially helpful (when they happen to synchronize with some conundrum going on in my life at the time). That is, many times these seminars are laden with metaphors and example stories that can be useful. However, a cliche is still a cliche, and for a person not to recognize the cliche, and even go so far as to announce that, upon hearing the cliche for perhaps the thousandth time, they're still mind-boggled by its profundity and freshness, is the mark of that person being a clone.

Clones seem to have the inability to recognize that they are fully embracing known stereotypes. For example, watch any MTV Spring Break. Thousands and thousands of chiseled people, both mentally and physically, distinguishable only by hair color and swim-trunk color. In Oregon, a neighbor native to the region (or "hick", as the classification goes), who'd actually never left the region, had a heavy Southern accent. Probably the most indicative of a clone is a youthful Caucasoid donning oversized denim pants with a crotch-seam around the knees, an oversized T-shirt, and a baseball cap turned to the side. These interesting specimens have a peculiar gait and "anxious-stiffness" along the shoulder region that produces a unique presence combining "menace" and "jackass" together. Also, it seems to affect the speech patterns in such a way as to emulate retardation or at the least half-wittedness. But I digress...

Stereotypes, like cliches or plants, require frequent watering, or they will shrivel up and die. Like cliches, this requirement is met through the combination of its "empirical" reaffirmation, as well as its memetic proliferation to new hosts. Unlike cliches, however, stereotypes reaffirm themselves, whereas cliches are reaffirmed through external circumstance. With this axiom, we can postulate:

The buzzword-based seminar is the King's Feast for the buzzword-based clone. Without buzzword-based seminars, the stereotype alive in the host clone will begin to shrivel and die. The starvation of the clone's donned stereotype leads to increasing stereotype-reaffirmation.

Ed's commentary itself is therefore either the rejoicing of a potential host's confirmation that they are not a buzzword-based clone, or that the said host has allowed the buzzword-based stereotype to shrivel and die.

Fascinating, isn't it?

Appendix:

For examples of clones / wsuGangstas, see this or this (and any related) or this or this or this (excellent specimen photos; not sure about the blog, but...)

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