Please TechCrunch, stop using "dead simple" to describe every new app. | Hacker News Reader

Please TechCrunch, stop using "dead simple" to describe every new app.

act.ly

30 pointsjgilliam18 comments

Please TechCrunch, publish whatever (legal) you want to. That's what got you where you are today. If I stop liking what you write, I just won't read your site any more. Yours, Not A Whiner.

You've been downvoted, but you have a solid point.

I find it sort of amusing that the thing that bothers someone about TC is the regular use of a bland two-word phrase. Personally I'm more offended by the sensationalism, gossip, self-importance, and echo-chamber magnification—all of which are reasons I stopped reading TC years ago.

Amen.

Interesting idea (act.ly), not entirely sure if it's necessary, though it could be useful to help create a mass movement.

However, please sort out the theme... the red is way too violent. It almost hurts my eyes to look at this page.

If "dead simple" is the new norm for web applications, isn't that a good thing?

So long as the term's actually appropriate.

Dear submitters,

Please stop submitting blog posts where people whine about people writing some trivial cliche.

That's now very cliche itself.

Only 481 for the literal "dead simple" match:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22dead+simple%22+s...

Still a lot, but not nearly as much.

We can make TechCrunch even geekier by moving to the "undead simple" scale. Is the app usable by a Zombie or animated skeleton? Or would one need to be as smart as a vampire? This would have the side-effect of converting TC into /. Desirability of that varies greatly depending on whom you ask.

No to long time ago I wrote this post about Simple and Easy in the tech world http://blog.smartupz.com/2010/03/simple-and-easy-as-terms-ar...

Went there, but didn't find any D+D references.

Related: it'd be nice if they said "on a tear" less to describe growth.

http://www.google.com/search?q=site:techcrunch.com+on+a+tear

4,420 mentions of that phrase on techcrunch.com. ;-)

"Dead simple" it a common and pretty old (60's/70's?) term originating from North of the UK. There's probably a Brit there with an infectious turn of phrase. When I'm working with people in the US for an extended length of time, they inherit a LOT of my colloquialisms.

It's a rather old term, even in the US, going back to the 1940s, at least in print. The example I linked to last time was a Time magazine book review from 1942 or something like that). It's really fun to investigate stuff like this using Google News' archive search :)

It's clear that usage has really taken off recently, although it is possible it may have peaked in 2008.

http://news.google.com/archivesearch?pz=1&cf=all&ned...

You should make up some random UK colloquialisms, and find the most outlandish one you can get them to adopt.

I think that would quickly turn into a real oyster carnival.

And business people, please don't "reach out" to me anymore. It's dead simple, just email or call.

When are we going to "touch base"?

I wish they'd stop posting about people leaving/joining a company. I can see if it's someone important....but they dedicate posts to nobodies. "A janitor at Facebook has decided to move to Google...does this spell doom for Facebook?"

I realize they gotta put out a lot of crap to get pageviews but this is ridiculous.

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