Let's 'Double-Click' on the Latest Cringeworthy Corporate Buzzword

I don't think it's about using their language for understanding. I think it's because they want to send a signal "Look, I'm like you. Let me be in your in-group." It's a tribal signal.

> but they do't realize we could all just agree to stop doing it and we'd all be happier.

The problem is that everyone wants to be in the high status in-groups, but the high status in-groups don't want to let all the rabble in. This is a perpetually unstable equilibrium. Once any given high status in-group signal becomes widely known by lower-status people, it ceases to be a useful signal for actual high status people (and, worse, eventually becomes a signal for "low status person trying to look high status") so must be discarded and replaced with a new one.

Once you realize it, this phenomenon is everywhere. It's the engine that drives almost all of fashion. It's why buzzwords and jargon come and go. It's where home furnishing and interior design fads stem from. It's why so very few things in our highly social human lives are ever really timeless.

I kind of miss the days when being a nerd was not a cool, even edgy, social statement but something you did to escape the MBA-types who have now stolen it from us.

> The phrase is “innovative,” says Beth DelGiacco, a vice president of corporate communications at biotech company Argenx, who praises its efficiency.

> “It’s only a few syllables. Everyone knows what you mean when you say it,” says DelGiacco, who regularly trots it out with peers.

The same is true of "drill down." It's not explored why "double-click" (3 syllables) is better than "drill down" (2).

> Tech-inflected buzzwords are especially apt to gain traction—think “network,” “bandwidth” or “take offline”—because they can sound smart or cutting-edge, says Doug Guilbeault, an assistant professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business who has studied corporate jargon.

> The inventor of the literal double-click, former Apple designer Bill Atkinson, isn’t convinced. Reached while boating on a recent weekday, Atkinson, now retired, says he’s never heard anyone use double-click as a metaphor and would steer clear of such usage himself, preferring more straightforward language.

A move known as 'The Asimov'.

Maybe your company, region or industry were the starting point and it just became widespread recently.

If you remove all paid content you would just have blogs left eventually… And all they’re doing is just paying for the content and regurgitating it.