The Language You Use
This post will take you about 4 minutes to read.
My father will forget more baseball than I will ever know.
He was a coach for decades. He taught me how to play the game. And specifically how to hit a baseball.
The mechanics of hitting are the opposite of exciting. It’s a science.
As a teenager, you never wanted to listen. You wanted the bat and to swing. That’s it.
But coaches tried to teach the mechanics. All that jargon is overwhelming and boring.
My father used to call it paralysis by analysis.
So how did he make the boring subject of hitting a baseball more interesting?
If you talk like a scientist, only scientists will understand you. If you talk like a trucker, everyone will understand you.
Simon Sinek
The words you use are critical to communication. The more you use empty, boring words - the harder it will be to get your point across.
In customer support, our team must explain technical concepts to help customers get started using our product. An example, installing two blocks of Javascript onto your site.
The process is dull. But it’s the boring task you must complete to do all the cool things with the product.
Choose your words carefully. Talk like a trucker. Not a scientist.
Take Net Neutrality
This is important topic. But it’s not simple to explain. Because the cable giants and FCC have buried it in boring language.
John Oliver fixes all of that. On his new series Last Week Tonight, he delivers a 13-minute rant on the importance of Net Neutrality. And he uses language that you can understand.
Net Neutrality. The only two words that cause more boredom in the english language are featuring Sting.
Instead of hiding behind the boring language, Oliver explains that it means all data has to be created equally no matter who created it. The Internet is a level playing field.
An end to Net Neutrality means companies can out-spend others and create an unequal playing field. A fast lane for the privileged and slow lane for the have-nots.
Fast lane for everybody. And a hyper-speed lane for others.
George Foote, a telecommunications lawyer, says fast lane and slow lane is not true. It really should be fast lane and hyper-speed lane.
Oliver calls bullshit on this boring explanation. He says it won’t be Usain Bolt and Usain Bolt on a motor-bike. It will be Usian Bolt and Usian Bolt-ed to an anchor. Colorful language that’s easy to understand.
A dingo as a babysitter.
President Obama tabbed John Wheeler, a former top lobbyist for cable and telecommunications companies, to be the next chair of the FCC. He used to fight for these companies and now he gets to regulate them.
All boring language. That’s why Oliver explains it as the equivalent of needing a babysitter and hiring a dingo. You can get how ridiculous that is because Oliver chooses words you can understand.
Preventing cable company fuckery.
Oliver shares a clip, where the government uses the following language: it seeks comment on ways to construe additional language in section 706, and even suggests using section 230B to broaden the scope of the commissions authority. That’s the problem.
If you want to do something evil, put it into something boring.
John Oliver, Last Week Tonight
Oliver makes the amazing example that Apple could put the entire text of Mein Kampf in the user agreement and you would just click agree. This leads Oliver to abandon the term Net Neutrality.
Just call it preventing cable company fuckery. That’s not boring. And it tells the whole story.
Make sure you watch the whole clip here.
Slap the midget.
That’s how my father made the boring subject of hitting a baseball more interesting. A simple phrase that causes you to turn your head and let out a chuckle. (No harm or discrimination is meant by it).
It’s a way to make the hitter properly use his bottom hand to swing through the ball. Words that demand attention and deliver the message in language you can understand.
Talk like a trucker. Because no one likes boring language.