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I've been infuriated for some time by the way the uneducated, wrong-headed, ill-informed criminal misuse of the word "optic" has spread. "Optic" relates to vision, to seeing, to sight. Recently it has become fashionable to use it to mean "how something looks"--if something seems, prima facie, to be embarrassing, it is said to have bad optics. Of course, this is the worst kind of ignorance, mistaking a word that deals with HOW to see with what something LOOKS like. Only idiots and nursery schoolers would make this kind of mistake, yes? No sadly, people who would appear to be educated, if clearly not intelligent, have not only practiced this linguistic malpractice; they've spread it and made it acceptable by broad usage. It's the hone/home fiasco all over again.
But now, now I think I've encountered something which may, possibly, be even worse. A piece I was reading referred to a director having "lensed" a film series.
No. Just No. You think you can palliate my rage by engaging in something almost approaching synecdoche ("lens" for "camera" for "record with a camera"). But no. It's not just that it's This is far too arch, too self-conscious, too mannered, too affected. No, no, a thousand times NO!
I was discussing this with a fellow aging relic of the twentieth century (a right-thinking chap from, of course, north Jersey) and we realised that the future will be a strange land, an odd territory inhabited by a race so fond of clever hipster in-jokes and avant garde, convention-challenging attitudes that it has evolved a language that changes so rapidly and is so much more concerned with appearance than meaning that no one can actually *communicate* with it.
Now, go! Get off of my lawn. Meddling kids...
But now, now I think I've encountered something which may, possibly, be even worse. A piece I was reading referred to a director having "lensed" a film series.
No. Just No. You think you can palliate my rage by engaging in something almost approaching synecdoche ("lens" for "camera" for "record with a camera"). But no. It's not just that it's This is far too arch, too self-conscious, too mannered, too affected. No, no, a thousand times NO!
I was discussing this with a fellow aging relic of the twentieth century (a right-thinking chap from, of course, north Jersey) and we realised that the future will be a strange land, an odd territory inhabited by a race so fond of clever hipster in-jokes and avant garde, convention-challenging attitudes that it has evolved a language that changes so rapidly and is so much more concerned with appearance than meaning that no one can actually *communicate* with it.
Now, go! Get off of my lawn. Meddling kids...
