Back when the Simpson's was socially relevant, there was a character called Comic Book Guy. Misanthropic geek that he was, Comic Book Guy would often display his ire for something by proclaiming "Worst (noun) ever!" For example, "worst show ever," "worst game ever," and so on. He uttered these little decrees with the flat authority best suited to those petty tyrants of fandom, the comic book nerd. The sentences came off in short bursts, like the vocal cords splitting three blocks of wood in steady succession. Worst. Show. Ever. Flash forward ten years or so. Insert a flashly rock montage in your head if you like to make the transition more convincing. Best. Montage. Ever.
Ok, by now it's probably abundantly clear what I'm getting at, but I'll just get right to it. I'm talking about writing / posting / texting / messaging short declarative statements like "greatest. movie. ever" all upon your digital domain. It's pretty clear to me that it has its roots in aforementioned Simpson's character, but I feel like that is pretty inconsequential. In a world of free-floating signifiers circa Baudrillard, hunting down the "original" of something is treacherous, misleading, and doesn't really mean a whole lot anyway. So here, while I give the nodding head to The Simpsons, I'm more inclined to care how "word period word period word period" is used in the context of written social exchange.
First, what happens when you talk like this? Let's. Think. About. It. We are forced to consider each word as a self-standing, self-important entity unto it's own. "Let's." Let us. Let us together. "Think." To ponder, question, turn over in one's head. "About." Concerning the aforementioned subject. "It." The item of question. What it is. What is it? It's the linguistic equivalent of taking apart a small engine and examining each piece before putting them together and making it run. Before we hear the engine purr, we have to see how it works. Each period is a pause and a dis-assembly. Our poor English teachers in the first grade who taught us how to interpret these marks set us up for slaughter. There are two choices for the reader. One, he or she can respect the authority of the punctuation and actually take each word at its new meaning. By imbuing each word with the ostensible narrative strength and sense of an entire string of meaning (a complete sentence), the word now has an inflated sense of self-importance. In essence, we are forced to "read into" the word the same way we would "read into" a sentence. We are led to respect its authority as a hermetically sealed vessel of meaning.
Or, the reader can opt for a second choice. The. reader. can. simply. pretend. the. periods. aren't. there. and. read. it. like. a. normal. sentence. This requires a bit of work at first, but if we can walk on the moon, I'm sure we can skip a few periods. This denies the reader the intended effect of the periods. The author has built a magnificent cathedral of words with three pillars, each of which demands to be respected separately and marvelled at. However, the reader just stands in there and thinks "this is useful for getting out of the rain." However, these choices lead to a double-bind. In any case the reader is going to put more work into reading that sentence than is necessary.
The point of this is to add dramatic effect, making us realize the supreme significance of the statement. But this is faulty logic. The jocular and ephemeral slang-based nature of the statement instantly embeds it in a lexicon of catch-phrase frivolousness. Let's assume that "word to your momma" meant something to Vanilla Ice. Something real and heart-felt. It means nothing to me if for no other reason than I recognize it as a catchphrase, a rather silly one at that, and rightly assign it all the importance of someone whistling dixie to themselves. Moreover, in the social circles in which this semantic nugget travels it is customary to mistake earnestness for sarcasm and vice-versa. In fact, the comedic zeitgeist right now is morbidly obese from feeding on humor based in sarcastic enjoyment of earnestly disguised sarcasm. Do they really think The Watchmen was the "best. movie. ever." or are they being sarcastic? If I write "rly?" will they think I'm stupid for thinking it might be good? What if I say "yea, it was so dumb" and they think I'm an elitist prick for turning my nose up at it?
In sum, it does not pay to take this approach. It is more work, and the communication becomes too muddled in terms of intent and meaning. Also, it's stupid. If you just ignore the periods, you've unnecessarily burdened the author with the task of physically typing an awkward sentence. It is not easy to defy training and seek those periods after every word. The author, architect-like again, has built a one-room house with three ceilings and three floors. You, the ungrateful home-dweller, sleep on an unfolded cardboard box in the corner. Whatever the reading option, the whole purpose behind the phrase is entirely self-defeating. Yet it persists. And, like all catch-phrases I think, it persists not because it is in any way very good at conveying some piece of information, it persists because it marks off the author as part of a group. Sure, this could be of the cock-strutting cultural capitalist variety. I saw this band before they were cool. Or, and certainly more likely, it could just be another piece of flair thrown onto what is already a rather flashy and eclectic suit of identity markers. In this way, it is as contrived and inauthentic as eating food and having a poop come out of your butt. It is par for the course. When in Rome. In point of fact though, this naturalization is what disturbs me the most. It is the "most. insidious. ever." But not because it changes people, or even represents a significant shift in youth communication unto itself. It's because it so perfectly reflects already naturalized shifts in our culture at large. Case in point, the advertising industry.
1930s Johnson fishing equipment ad
2000s Johnson fishing equipment ad
Ok. Nothing Earth shattering here. Over time we are communicating the simple message "Buy This" less with words and more with images. Less with things and more with ideas. Less with tangibles and more with intangibles like dreams, desires, wants, and so on. This has been going on for years. But I blame the "got milk?" campaign for really driving home this idea that the shopping impulse is best triggered by massive branding campaigns which rely almost entirely upon compact and extremely trite little questions and catch phrases; working to completely bypass any rational questioning process. "What's in your wallet?" "Hungry? Grab a Snickers!" "Beef. It's what's for dinner." The latest Pepsi campaign has taken this to a new and nauseating level of vapidity.
Pepsi doesn't have the market corned on lame-ass advertising campaigns, but I think this one gets a gold star for being so completely comprehensive and so completely annoying. Marketer to CEO: "Hey, did you know that our circular logo also looks like the letter 'o' which also looks like a circle!? Jackpot! Hey, did you know people enjoy being stabbed in the eyes with giant fucking neon spears of vacuous drivel!?" CEO: "I think you may be on to something here Perkins."
But more on point, there is literally no connection, not even a feigned connection here between the ad and the product. "LOL." Ok. Got'cha. "Fo Sho." Hey, I know that means something like "oh yea, you bet'cha" where I'm from. "JOY." Who doesn't like joy? I would buy gallons of maggot squirming mule semen if the word "joy" was printed bright and bold across the jar.
This is also clear when we consider the sound bite, which has been getting steadily shorter since people started paying attention to such things in the 1960s. In the 1960s, we could expect a typical sound bite from public figure X to last over 40 seconds. Today we're down to less than 8 seconds. Simultaneously, the time devoted to visual information has increased, meaning we're spending less time reading and more time getting our information from images. For anyone that's been in a classroom in the past 10 years + this should evoke a big hearty "well duh."
The point I'm trying to make is this. The more products (be they sodas or politicians) we have in the world demanding our attention, the less time we will have to really scrutinize the worth of said product. In fact, we will clamour all over ourselves so that advertisers and the media will condense that stuff down into a digestible bite. These bites (JOY!) become disproportionately responsible for carrying the burden of what should be relatively major cognitive sequences. For example, a three letter word, LOL, a seemingly infinitesimal nugget of information, unpacks a jack-in-the-box of potential meanings which burst forth with a conviction and zealousness completely out of proportion with the original signifier. What occurs in that gaping chasm between the original signifier and the exponentially expanding significations? What does it mean when we increasingly base life decisions (Army Strong!) not so much on a litany of dry facts, but on a compelling and dazzling image? How many bodies are being fed into that abyss between how something means and what that thing actually, literally, substantively means? Bodies being fed into holes? For fuck's sake that is dark! But follow along, because the same goes for "worst. catchphrase. ever."
I led this post by comparing the unnecessary use of periods to menstruation. Shoving periods in your catchphrase is like shoving tampons in your vagina. It staunches flow. This may be all fine and good for the preservation of Khaki Capris, but it does nothing to advance culture in a positive direction. "Positive?" Shit. I can't believe I just said that. I certainly don't want to argue what that actually means; suffice it to say there is a danger involved in staunching flow. There is a danger in self-producing sound bites. There is a danger in handling personal social networks like miniature marketing campaigns for the product of You.
The danger is not only that we become brand whores, mimicking the pimp-speak of the advertising industry, but that we eventually come to a point where we fail to say anything at all. Meaning becomes condensed to such a point that it becomes all too much indecipherable mystery loaf heaped on the buffet line of life. The gap between signifier and signified becoming so vast and so complete that the very idea of there being a space at all becomes antiquated, swallowed up. Have you ever repeated a word a few dozen times until it becomes a foreign thing to you, rolling around in your mouth like a wad of cotton, having no connection to anything at all?
joy.
