A phrase that means nothing isn’t a useful term for serious adults; it’s a fad for the immature and silly. – “Meaningless”
Imagine if you will how a master mechanic might react if he saw you using a wrench to pound in nails, or stepping on the handle of a large screwdriver you were using as a pry bar. If he were of an unusually calm disposition he might just watch you for a while, shaking his head, before making some comment like, “That might go faster if you used the right tool,” or “Would you like me to show you how to do that?” And if he were both patient and wise he might let you injure yourself first before commenting, so that you’d be more likely to listen. But if he were as high-strung as I am, he might quickly lose patience with you, push you out of the way and do the job properly (possibly after striking you repeatedly about the head and neck with the abused tool). As I wrote in “Nasty Words”,
As a writer, words are my tools, and I cherish them and baby them the way a good mechanic cares for the tools of his trade. And just as a good mechanic always uses the right tool for the job rather than trying to make do with whatever happens to be nearby, so I insist on using the right word…and just as some mechanics are annoyed by seeing others misuse or abuse their tools, so am I annoyed by the misuse or abuse of words…
That column was about the rampant misuse of the word “vagina” to mean not only any part of a woman’s sexual anatomy, but also as a vulgar substitute for non-anatomical uses of the slang word “pussy”. I’ve also written about my distaste for the improperly-constructed and imprecisely-used term “homophobia” (which actually means “fear of sameness or monotony”; an attack or word has no feelings and therefore cannot be “phobic” of anything); my rejection of those who want to ban things hiding behind the prefix “pro-“; the powerful annoyance I have for the word “privilege” as it is commonly used today; my deep revulsion for the word “deserve” (“the visible part of an iceberg of moral odiousness floating unseen below the social waterline”); my intolerance for “fair” (both word and concept); and the complete meaninglessness of the faddish shibboleth “human trafficking”. As you’ve probably guessed, today I’m going to unload both barrels on another such term, the meaningless tech buzzword “disrupt”.
First, let’s start with the actual definition of the word: to interrupt the normal progress of something by causing a disturbance or problem; or, to destroy something’s structure (as in “cellular disruption”). If you consult a bunch of dictionaries you’ll discover that there is no positive usage of this word; it always refers to a destructive process. Of course, that could be desirable if the thing one wants to disrupt is itself destructive or evil, such as a police operation or the schemes of a politician. And yet somehow tech-worshipers of the sort who believe in “The Singularity” seem to have assigned a positive meaning to it, and believe that people will react positively when told that the techie wants to “disrupt their industry” (even though even Urban Dictionary admits that the term is a mere buzzword with no specific definition). I recently blasted a reader who sent me an email hawking some website which claimed it was dedicated to “disrupting the oldest profession”, and while I realized later that he was merely forwarding the email rather than writing it, I have to marvel at the deep cluelessness of a marketing department in the modern US which fails to comprehend that no sex worker is going to react well to someone claiming they want to “disrupt” our profession at a time when the government and countless prohibitionist NGOs are working very hard at doing exactly that by
censorship, persecution, surveillance, entrapment schemes, raids and other such tactics. Attention, tech idiots: I know y’all don’t live in the real world, but sex workers are sick and tired of violent thugs and evil control freaks trying to disrupt our profession (and almost that sick and tired of clueless amateurs trying to “disrupt” it in the app-developer sense). Here’s some free marketing advice: When trying to market your product to adults, it’s probably best to avoid adolescent slang, and when marketing to people outside your little circle-jerk it’s probably best to avoid jargon that’s going to sound negative to normal people. Words mean things, and you’ll avoid offending potential clients if you remember that.
There is nothing like the intersection of the technology and business worlds to generate buzzwords and other useless jargon. I can remember when everything in computing had to have “NT” appended to its name. It literally just meant “New Technology”. So it never really meant anything, but hey, turn it into an acronym (technically an initialism) and all of a sudden it’s cool. “Made with NT technology!”
I think ‘disruption’ in the buzzwordy techy sense was coined by, or at least popularized by Clayton Christensen’s book ‘The Innovator’s Dilemma’ wherein he used the computing industry as a case study in innovation. Computing was once dominated by IBM who made and sold powerful and hugely expensive mainframe computers to corporations, governments, and universities. That business model was “disrupted” by the small scale personal and portable computing we see everywhere today. In that context it makes sense since it is used consistent with its meaning. Unfortunately, every twit with an idea trying to secure venture capital grabbed onto this term as if they too were about to launch a new billion dollar industry. And so, we arrive where we are today with another word that is used to mean something good-ish, but really means nothing. Kinda like the term “natural” used on any food product.
I’m 100% with you on “deserve”. It makes me cringe every time I hear it spewed at me from yet another advertisement intent on parting me from my money. Its close cousin for me is the term “supposed to”, as in “Women aren’t supposed to want to do sex work”, “All men are supposed to want strict monogamy”, etc. It’s usually thrown out there by someone who can’t comprehend, or at least accept the reality of, actual human behavior that differs from their own narrow view.
As an ex-writer, I appreciate your sentiments here. Many’s the time I’ve bitten my tongue to keep from becoming the grammar/spelling/usage-police. My personal hoodoo is the acronyms mentioned in the previous comment. These are pure rude, disrespectful elitism when used outside the limited group where people can be expected to know what the TLA in question means.
Given the current state of education in the U.S. I would not hold my breath waiting for an improvement in grammar, or usage, nor do I think this is necessarily a bad thing. Language seems to be made to mangle and this is one of the mechanisms that ensure it’s always evolving.
If I’m going to rant about it I will address the underlaying cause as I see it; People don’t think about other people when they write or speak – and in most people there’s not a lot of difference between the two modes. There’s a test to distinguish good writing from bad – does the writer care about the reader. It’s not always obvious in the line-by-line text, but the totality of the piece will often show this pretty plainly.
YMMV.