The Amazing Time-Wasting Internet Contraption

This is the best thing I’ve seen on the internet all week, and it’s only 3:19 on Monday morning. I predict, however, that nothing this week will beat the amazing artifically intelligent Guess the Dictator and/or Sit-Com Character device. It is remarkably savvy and astonishingly distracting. Have at it.

Noise: Gorillaz, “Feel Good, Inc.”

Stop Surrendering Your Language

Here’s the thing: I love The Daily Show and I love people’s blogs, but you people — you Wil Wheaton types — are giving control of the language to the people you deem to be the most stupid. Bush says “the internets” and you all put it into regular use, turning his misinformed little slip into standard speech. Senator Ted Stevens waxes idiotic about the nature of the internet, and the geek-chic digerati celebrates the sound-bite by making it a part of everyday speech. These people say something stupid, and then you use it until it’s standardized.

You’re helping them frame the debate. You’re turning their misinformed opinion into the standard metaphor for the subject, whether your intent is to mock them or not. You’re giving them precious airtime, bandwidth and mental real-estate. You’re surrendering the language of the debate to them.

This isn’t like taking hold of a word like queer or black and turning it against the social vandals who’re trying to hurt you with it, making it your own. It’s not a display of fearless self-acceptance and proud defiance. You’re not Gwendolyn Brooks. These aren’t code-words you use to get into The Daily Show’s speakeasy culture. You’re not a progressive rum-runner winking over Prohibition water and you’re not playing liberal blues in a secret intelligentsia gin-joint.

Stop focusing on the silly stupid details, it just makes you look like a malcontent. Stop letting your mockery be the foundation of your vocabulary about issues, it just gives your opponents ideas the coverage they need to insinuate. The fellow Georgian who told my friend that “liberals are terrorists” wasn’t being sarcastic — just because it seems obviously ridiculous to you doesn’t mean it won’t seem reasonable through ubiquity. You’re not combating lunacy by adopting its wording.

To you, Senator Ted Stevens sounds like a schmuck, but in response to your use of his language he can come across sounding like an exasperated activist with an unpopular opinion. You’re not making an argument when you repeat the gag. You’re just giving him airtime. You’re not making an argument when you assume that anyone who matters knows that he’s stupid just because you’re capable of referential jokes. You’re just surrendering your language.

Stop surrendering your language. Stop surrendering your language. Stop surrendering your language.