Fake truth.

I know I am the wrong generation.

And I know I have a low threshhold for bullshit. You probably would too if you grew up during Vietnam and Richard Nixon’s presidency.

My training was always to question everything. Especially language.

Language is too important not to be scrutinized.

I’ve recommended this before, but to really see what I mean, watch Stan Neumann’s movie based on the diaries of Viktor Klemperer, “Language Does Not Lie.”

Sure, the movie is 100 minutes long. But that’s a lot less time than it would take to read Klemperer’s seminal LTI (Lingua Tertii Imperii) The Language of the Third Reich. 

And, if nothing else, it will force you to listen to the news, read the paper, agency memos and other oftentimes manipulative documents with more than a soupcon of cynicism.

About every 90 seconds or so I read something somewhere about a company, or a software, or an app, or a procedure, or a survey, or a complementary half-ounce of pretzels on a flight to an airport that was last remodelled when Eisenhower was president, seeking to “improve the customer experience.”

I don’t know about you, I haven’t had a good customer experience from any company with an aggregate of over 500 employees in pretty much my whole life.

Even Apple is more interested in altering the configuration of its cords and connectors than in improving their customer experience.

ME:                
Do you have a Apple Watch charger with a USB-C connector?

APPLE:         
No. You can buy an adaptor.

ME:    
So I can’t charge my new phone with my new computer unless I use an adaptor.

APPLE:         
Sorry.

-

ME:    
I got a bill under my door last night.

MARRIOTT: 
We show you checking out today.

ME:    

I made a reservation for three nights.

MARRIOTT: 

Sorry. Come down and get your keys reactivated.

-

My personal belief is that companies (or agencies) that seek to “improve the customer experience" aren’t necessarily lying—but they aren’t, either, telling the whole truth. I think what they should be saying is “we seek to improve the customer experience without cutting into our profits or spending more money serving customers.”

Or as the robber barons (past and current) might have put it, "we care about our workers. But not enough to pay them a living wage.

Lies and half truths seem to make up the large majority of corporate communications today.

As Budd Schulberg's Sammy Glick might have blurted, "Why tell the truth when you can lie?"

Or as Chico Marx once Dumonted, "Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?"

Then there are these. Just as Soviet. Just as Trumpian. Just as Corporatese. Just as American, in fact.

“This website uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience on our website.”

“This call may be recorded to ensure quality service.”

“We care about your privacy.”

“Would you like to buy a bridge in Brooklyn?”

Nostalgia.*

*This is nostalgia in the Homeric sense of the word. This isn't a longing for The Brady Bunch of Porky's II. In Greek, Nostos=home. Algia=sickness. Homesickness. Not like a kid at summer camp. More, like Odysseus's longing for Ithaka. For the responsibility of home, the stability of home, the order and love of home. The sadness and strength and calling of home. The missing of all that--and the sickness that comes from that missing.

This morning as I rushed my way downtown to meet and old client turned friend, I had a spasm of nostalgia break over me.

I have a thing, I’ve always had it, about being on time. If someone says, ‘let’s meet at 9,’ chances are I’ll be lingering outside their address around 8:15. Having lived in the city virtually all my life, the only way you can reliably not be late is to be early. If you go through life in the city assuming you’re not going to be stuck on the train because of a sick passenger at Euclid Avenue or trapped behind a garbage truck for 17 minutes, well that’s just asking for trouble.

The Greeks had a word for it, or nearly so. Hubris. Excessive pride, especially in the face of the Gods. The Pantheon of Gods in the city are Delay, Disruption, Disorder, Detour and Disaster. If you don’t pay proper homage to them by leaving for appointments early, you might as well cash in your punctuality chips. One of the Gods will surely strike you down.

In my car heading down on a summer-traffic FDR, I realized there was a good chance I’d be excessively early. And that’s when Dame Nostalgia took me back to a better time in our sad sad world.

All of a sudden I was cooling my heels in a better place than the dirty metal benches on the corner of Charlton and Varick. I was sitting on a leather-covered stool in front of a serpentining white formica counter at the old Chock Full o’ Nuts coffee shop that used to sit right outside the wrought iron gates of Columbia University at 116^th and Broadway. I suppose it’s been replaced by a Well Fargo criminal bank, or a nail salon, or a bland chain restaurant of some sort. The world is so much the worse for its persistent homogenization.

I can’t really go into a Starbucks. I hate the whole pretentious rigamarole of baristas, faux Italian nomenclature imbued with over-promise (a medium is a tall) and more than anything, I detest the idea of waiting ten minutes for a cup of coffee and having to tell anyone my name to fetch it. I’m something of a privacy nut. In fact, I was married eleven years before I told my wife my right name.

Chock Full o’ Nuts was anti-pretense. The waitresses were professional waitresses. Stern and efficient. They didn’t need to know your name to bring you a cuppa and a plate of eggs. They just gave it to you along with a light green receipt with their illegible scrawls on it, writ with a stubby pencil stored, ever-so-daintily, behind one ear.

You could open the paper on that formica counter. You could get a refill without asking. And if you got a side of toast, damn it, it was properly toasted, not simply warmed by a toaster the size of a Nash-Rambler Lark.

I like to say that every place I used to enjoy going when I was a kid has been replaced by a Home Depot. And that’s very nearly true.

My middle-class neighborhood is now dotted with buildings for the mega-rich, where apartments start at $13 million and most people combine two or three because why wouldn’t you if you were making $67 million a year with another $12 million in bonuses and extortion. The rich are different from you and me, as F. Scott noted. Yes, they eat more poor.

So, early for my meeting, unable to enter the pasturized and plasticene precincts of a pre-packaged Starbucks, I sat on a grubby metal bench amidst the strewings of a dozen homeless people. I nibbled at my toasted corn, sipped at my black iced and wrote this piece.

Amid the roar of New York traffic, the monoxide of a thousand trucks and the inexorable heat of another Sixth Extinction global-warming summer, the clock moved ever-forward to my 9AM appointment. I looked ever backward to a seemingly cooler, and better time.

A demurral and Slap-of-the-Week from Uncle Slappy.

First in an occasional series.

Gobbledegook features actual quotations from actual press-releases
purportedly uttered by actual people.
All in absolutely no-discernible language.

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Example One:
“For the last six months, I’ve been doing brand and digital transformation consulting in order to get further upstream with brands and help solve their most complex business problems. What I now see as fact is that brands need partners who boot up business-first and can help them better understand their data and customers. Yes, creativity and experience matter more than ever, but sustainable business growth only happens when intelligent data, tech, and creative solutions work harmoniously together. Art and science are required in equal parts.”

Example Two:
"With this new U.S. leadership team in place, we will bring to our clients what they really need: personalized experiences at scale, to enable them to leapfrog the competition. Clients are feeling pressure from ecommerce platforms, walled gardens and fierce competition from D2C brands.”

Example Three:

"Still, with social media becoming ubiquitous, and consumers seeking more authentic, transparent messaging, luxury brands are strategically ceding control of their marketing content, working with both influencers and regular customers to co-create experiences. They’re also tapping into shoppable media, making it far easier for customers to go from a point of discovery to a point of purchase.

"As an increasing share of luxury purchases moves online, brands are using new forms of content — influencer, UGC, etc. — to engage and convert their audiences directly on platform."