

"Authentic" is dead - gyardley
http://blog.asmartbear.com/authentic-dead.html

======
mojuba
_______ enables you to connect, interact, and engage in powerful new ways.
Streamline how you work, collaborate more easily, and create high impact
communications. Designed to meet the needs of today’s business, ______ helps
you get more done — easier, faster, better._

Can you guess which popular product is this?

~~~
patio11
Just for the humor value, I'm hoping it is Microsoft Office.

 _searches_

The true answer is _even better_.

~~~
mcav
Spoiler:

It's Adobe Acrobat.

------
zach
Taking a stance against marketing speak is just another form of marketing
speak.

~~~
smartbear
If you believe that, it's impossible to have a discussion.

~~~
wingo
I don't mean to be harsh, but your article made me think that you were more
interested in making strident, overly assertive statements than in having a
conversation.

~~~
nollidge
Are you talking about the headline or the article? Because the article
appeared to me to be rather nuanced and not at all strident.

~~~
wingo
More the article than the headline, actually. To me it's written in a kind of
"broadcast" mode -- choppy sentences and paragraphs, overly abundant
typographic emphasis, etc. Reminds me of people who try to win arguments by
being loud -- not amenable to conversation.

I really don't mean to attribute these characteristics to the author, who I'm
sure is a fine fellow; just that the article brought them to mind.

~~~
ahoyhere
The article is written very calmly. Short sentences and small paragraphs are a
writing style that says nothing of the author except a will to be readable.

Moreover, he uses classic rhetorical techniques, including concessions and
common places, in a very reasonable way to show that he understands the other
side of the coin.

You just don't like the content. Stop trying to pin the blame on the style,
and admit it.

~~~
jamesbritt
It also came off as an example of what the author was advocating. Don't be
wishy-washy, don't skirt around things, say what you mean and back it up.

------
olefoo
This reminds me of undergrad discussions of Heidegger, if you are reaching for
authenticity, then you are always already inauthentic by definition.

~~~
smartbear
I didn't say reaching for authenticity is inauthentic.

In fact, I explicitly said these ideas are worthy and should be pursued.

Rather, you can't just invoke well-worn phrases because they've been misused
so much that people don't know what they mean anymore. You have to do the
thing, just say it in a new way.

It's a shame, just like it's a shame that the word "gay" can no longer just
mean "happy," but it's a fact that you have to deal with.

~~~
olefoo
Some goals recede further into the distance the harder you try to reach them.
You can't work at having an authentic relationship with your customers, you
have to talk to them like a real person.

In it's practical application it's a bit of a jedi mind trick; you can't force
yourself to be more authentic than you are at any given point in time; you
just have to relax and be, authentically.

I'd agree with you on the overuse of certain tropes, pretty much any community
has a few terms that are never precisely defined that are used as shorthand to
frame a loose group of ideas "lean startups", "social media", "agile"; they'll
be used and abused and everyone involved will have a slightly different piece
of the elephant in mind when they use the term. But within the community they
aren't used as precise technical terms, but rather as signals of allegiance to
one sub-group or ideology.

------
arethuza
"Seamless Integration" should be added to that list.

------
stcredzero
A useful metric for me: when someone says X is to be disregarded, disregard
_them_. The problem is not with the word. The problem is with how individuals
and companies use the word and how well they understand and apply the
underlying concept.

Buzzwords come in and out of fashion. Real substance sticks around.

~~~
jim_dot
But if you disregard them, should we disregard you? It can be a big
disregarding circle!

~~~
wmeredith
Disregard this statement.

------
pohl
Can we add "foo is dead" to the list?

~~~
pavel_lishin
That's not scheduled until next year.

~~~
eru
Bar is the new black!

------
c0riander
The reason these words are abused is because they work -- rather than
admonishing that they "should no longer be used, ever, in any context except
derisive mocking," it seems a bit more productive to recognize that there are
times and places when customers are more receptive to (and even prefer) being
told something is "powerful" than that it "processes 6,253,427 requests
daily." (A lot of sites have front-page hype backed up with buried numbers and
figures for those who really want to know, anyway.) Being a savvy consumer
means knowing what words to dig deeper on, but let's face it, all consumers
aren't savvy -- and most of them don't need to be.

~~~
danielmason
"The reason these words are abused is because they work..."

Isn't this just an example of a bandwagon effect cognitive bias? How does the
ubiquitous nature of bad copy make it any more effective? If anything, that's
180 degrees from true.

If every marketing statement could be taken at face value, this would work
fine. Unfortunately, everyone has access to the same thesaurus I do. How am I
distinguishable from my competitors if both our sites read like a checklist of
abstractions?

Your point about the request processing number really drives this home.
Whether someone prefers the word "powerful" as a stand-in for a demonstrative
figure depends entirely on whether they're already inclined to believe
whatever you say. If that is a good description of your average first-time
visitor, then, um, I wouldn't waste much time on writing copy anyway. Just
have a headline reading "This is exactly what you need." and a sign-up button.

------
gyardley
I've only got one caveat about this article - in a competitive space where
money is being raised, being 'the leading provider of' or 'the market leader'
counts for a lot. There's therefore a lot of incentives for the less-than-
ethical to exaggerate numbers that can't easily be independently verified.

If you go out the door with hard stats, be prepared for someone else to use
those stats and claim they're doing better than you - and their claim will
have a bit more verisimilitude because they won't have to guess about _your_
performance. Frustrating, but it happens.

------
lzell
Is it? My marketing copy doesn't agree. And that has worked out pretty well.

------
thenbrent
A suggestion to overcome this: if your sentence's meaning relies on an
adjective, it needs a better verb.

~~~
houseabsolute
There are dragons down that path too unless you buy-in to the idea that by
rationalizing adjectives you're somehow going to synergize the language.

~~~
thenbrent
haha very true and well demonstrated.

------
DrJokepu
Clearly the author is not very familiar with the vocabulary of the hipster
subculture. There are people who can argue for hours whether some band is
still 'authentic' or not.

~~~
alexro
This is what the author is saying: _authentic_ isn't binary

------
zmmmmm
One of my favorites is QuickSSHD - dead simple, starts an ssh server on your
phone so you can ssh in and browser around or even better, scp files to / from
it (no need to plug in your phone to put files on it any more ...)

------
mos1
"Foo is a fast, easy way to bar." makes it clear what Foo does, and on what
dimensions it's supposed to excel. That's clear and useful.

Please don't bog me down in details right out of the gate. Give me the 30,000
foot view, with an option to drop down lower if I like the lay of the land.

~~~
derefr
But neither "fast" nor "easy" carries any semantic weight in the sentence—no
one will ever say "Foo is the _slow, difficult_ way to bar." Just say that
"Foo helps you bar" or even "Need to Bar? Try Foo."

~~~
mos1
This is why I wrote that it indicates "on what dimensions it's supposed to
excel". Here's a non-abstract example:

\----

Mercedes CLS550: the safe luxury car.

BMW M5: the sporty luxury sedan.

Toyota Camry: the reliable family car.

Hyundai Sonata: inexpensive, practical transportation.

Jeep Wrangler: fun off-road vehicle.

\----

Nobody is going to refer to their car as unsafe, not sporty, unreliable,
impractical, or not fun, but that doesn't make the brief descriptions
unhelpful. It tells me why the creator thinks their car is different than the
others.

And while nobody will say "the slow, difficult way", they might well say "the
most powerful way", "the fully-customizable way" or "the environmentally
responsible way" all of which indicate to me that they are differentiated by
something other than speed or ease of use.

Your proposed alternatives tell me absolutely nothing except what market the
product is in. You're making me work to discover why your product is different
than others in the market, and that can't be a good thing for you.

~~~
derefr
You make a good point—I was assuming, though, that the product was in a market
where speed and ease-of-use were the _only possible dimensions_ by which to
evaluate the product. This happens a lot—tax preparation companies, for
instance, aren't going to say they're the "most powerful" or "most eco-
friendly" way to do your taxes; they're going to say they get you out of the
building as quickly as possible and back to your day. They're _all_ going to
say that. And so, in those cases, it's meaningless. Many segments of the web
application market that those around here like to target have the same
problem.

~~~
mos1
I absolutely agree that one should, at a minimum, test meaningful statements
before resorting to pointless or tautological verbiage.

That said, if it turned out that 'Infiniti G37: car.' was split testing better
than 'Infiniti G37: the high-performance luxury sedan', I'd double-check their
work, then roll out the new slogan. After all, at some level it's more to do
with what works than what is elegant and satisfying.

