Dialing back on the violent metaphors
“Evil happens when good people do nothing.” It’s a saying that’s always meant a lot to me. I might even go so far as to say that it’s driven me to go places that I didn’t need to go, to do or say things that I really didn’t need to do or say.
With that as a backdrop, let me plunge into a topic that’s not central to investment communications let alone digital marketing. And yet here I am commenting. It’s been on my mind even before the shooting of Donald Trump this past weekend, and before President Joe Biden’s use of the word “bullseye” when describing his campaign’s goal to catch up to Trump’s.
Words matter. Of course, they do. How could anyone be in marketing if they didn’t believe that the words they choose to use matter?
For at least the last year, I’ve been increasingly uncomfortable with the violence of the metaphors we use to add color to our language—every day but including in the marketing of investment products. It’s likely not more pronounced in the investment industry but may be more expected in competitive lines of work.
At right is a long list of words that I started, and the AI search engines had no trouble adding to. These are standard terms that appear in our business communications. And we all are more than fine with these because they add something.
The opposite view
Maybe these are all just “benign colloquialisms,” someone on LinkedIn argued last year in response to a broader post on the similar theme of violent metaphors. “Manipulative and stifling,” commented another.
Opposite viewpoints provide balance. But, by virtue of the broad adoption of violent metaphors, support for them is well represented. Defenders (or those who’ve just fallen into the habit of using the terms) themselves don’t get to obstruct expression of another way of looking at it, even while deriding as “woke.”
These metaphors can make concepts easier to understand. They’re used for emphasis, to make dry words come to life. They can pack in a lot of meaning that—let’s face it—borrows from what’s thoroughly understood in our culture.
Metaphors can not only be irresistible, they are ingrained in our work. Try talking about email marketing without mentioning targets, triggers or even blasts. We need killer content to break through and blow the audience away. For planning the important stuff, we use war rooms.
Do we really think there’s no connection whatsoever between our language and the violence that’s occurring with such frequency that it rarely shocks and is almost normalized?
If you knew me better, you’d know I can usually go with the flow. I’m adept at looking the other way. But there’s a limit and I’m approaching it. If words matter, then I don’t want to continue to use words that invoke violence. That may help not even in an infinitesimal way in the global scheme of things, but it’s something I can do. To continue merrily along feels to me like contributing to a further weakening of resistance to evil. Everyone is at a different point, it’s not my intent to lead a self-righteous crusade, this is just where I’ve come to.
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