Buzz Words: Business vernacular is the perfect buzz kill
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We would, of course, never willingly visit MSN.com, but during our monthly visit to our “new” Hotmail account to ensure it doesn’t expire, we happened upon a link to “25 Hot Buzzwords.” We clicked immediately, but only because this was the first listicle not framed as a 2004 year-end round up.
Before spitting out 25 bolded items, the article begins:
Have you ever witnessed a presentation that sounded impressive, but left you wondering what it all meant? Have you marveled at a colleague’s ability to deliver a discourse consisting entirely of recycled phrases that sound brilliant but say nothing? Want to wow a potential employer with your “understanding” of today’s workplace?
Translation: Here’s how to bullshit your way through a career. And then the fun begins with phrases like “alpha pup” (a marketing term referring to the coolest/most influential kid in town), “chips & salsa” (chips = hardware; salsa = software), “ideation” (brainstorm session) and “living document” (a document intended to be constantly revised.
And then near the bottom we came across three phrases in a row so familiar we turned off The Office reruns and saddled up to the screen (oh, you weren’t aware we wrote Jossip from a massaging chair in Brookstone?).
Repurposing: Taking content from one medium (books, magazine, etc.) and repackaging it to be used in another medium.
Reverbiagize: To reword a proposal with the hope of getting it accepted by people who didn’t like it the first time around. As in: “It’s the same concept, we’ve just reverbiagized it.”
Tszuj: (Pronounced “zhoozh”) To tweak, finesse or improve.
Repurposing? That’s the mission statement of this website. Reverbiagize? What do you think we submit to different editors at the same magazine? Tszuj? Fuck you Carson Kressley!
Jossip
