Please, Can We All Speak
Human Again?
Jargony, obfuscating language is everywhere, in every industry. Where do we go from here?
A few years ago, I started a folder.
Ridiculous Emails, I called it. I shuffled it over until it was smack in the middle of my screen. I had a system: I would have my coffee every morning, check my inbox, and each time I found a qualifying email, I would delete all identifying details and dump it into the folder. It was meant for my own amusement, and honestly, it was pretty successful.
Take one of the first entries.
To help with the Q4 functional prioritization ask flag any anticipated tier 1 Product priorities that are shipping in the first half of Q1 and will require Marketing resourcing in Q4.
Um. How do you ship a priority? And where do I get a speaking flag?
But more importantly, when did we stop speaking human? I recognized the individual words but the meaning behind them when they were strung together? Nada. Poof. Blue screen.
For decades, ridiculous, jargony, obfuscating language was the province of the law. Think of all the hours we would get back if cops and lawyers came with subtitles:
Made up police captain surrounded by microphones: The suspected motorist engaged in a verbal altercation with officers on the scene before fleeing the scene possibly into a wooded area.
Subtitles: The driver yelled at the cops and ran away.
We have become human servers with “bandwidth” instead of regular people with “time.”
Legal document: I, the undersigned, hereby depose and state under penalty of perjury that the facts contained herein are true and correct to the best of my knowledge, information, and belief.
Subtitles: Sign here if you’re not lying.
But in 2025 it’s a whole new Q4 functional prioritization ballgame. As in: It would help if for the ELT member overview of their H1 functional priorities we aligned as an ELT team before the marketing kick-off on what team DRIs what, no?
I know what you’re thinking. What’s an ELT member? Should I be one? Sounds kind of cool, like a secret club. My inbox had passed the point googling acronyms under the boardroom table. Now I was fielding communications from people speaking in the tongues of…? Marketing…? Tech? Global Optimization Something Something?
It didn’t end. Every morning was a new mystery to unravel.
Hoping to get this final doc over to ADX team before EOD to start building.
Who is ADX? Why are they a team? Can we have a team? I want to be on a team.
I understand that language evolves. It has to. What once had to “grow,” now needed to “scale.” A simple “request” has become “an ask.” And where we used to “think,” we were now expected to “ideate.” (Personally, I do miss “thinking.) We have become human servers with “bandwidth” instead of regular people with “time.”
“Goals” are now “deliverables” or “KPIs.” I miss the time we could just simply “agree.” Now we have to “align.” “Ladders” used to just be dangerous to walk under; now they are how you get an idea to the higher-ups. Aren’t we all a little nostalgic for a time when “funnels” were nouns? Instead of things with a “top” and presumably a “bottom,” but I guess we don’t talk about the bottoms very often. I get it. New day, new vernacular.
Once we lose our ability to communicate easily with each other we are that much closer to removing ourselves from our humanity.
But that’s not what’s happening here. This isn’t only the evolution of language; I would argue this is the devolution at the same time. We’re going backwards. This once amusing, now alarming, file on my desktop has become a testament to the adage that if you can’t convince, confuse.
Like everything else in the world, I’m tempted to blame AI. But I’m not sure that’s fair. Our language is getting thicker, denser, like cold maple syrup that won’t pour. Once we lose our ability to communicate easily with each other we are that much closer to removing ourselves from our humanity. I’m not saying that if we stop speaking human, we stop being human. But we lose the very thing that makes us part of the collective.
Language creates connection and resonates and builds community, and yes, I hear the irony in using branding jargon to make my case against branding jargon.
Maybe it’s not a big deal. Maybe we’re all confused by the jargon. Maybe people are trying to turn normal words into silly, vaguely techy terms to make it seem like they have real jobs. Maybe we should be less afraid of AI and more concerned with the words that are coming out of our own mouths. Maybe we’re all just trying to sound smarter than we are. I don’t know.
I should probably go and go ideate on that one.
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