Pseudo-Intellectual Business

I’ve just discovered a link between two things I love to rant about. Actually I’m kicking myself for not spotting it before. The more I think about it, the more obvious it is.

The link I have made is this: People who use Business Bullshit are in fact a breed of pseudo-intellectual.

Regular readers will know that I love to bait pseudo-intellectuals and expose them for what they are – bullshit merchants who know several big words and like to quote philosophy in order to make themselves  appear better than everybody else. The truth is, of course, that they blind people with their vocabulary because ultimately they don’t actually say anything that makes any sense.

My favourite pseudo-intellectuals are people who stand in front of vomit stains in contemporary art museums and try to impress upon anybody who is willing to lend an ear that the piece of shit in front of them is something more than the shallow mess it actually is.

Another breed is the hipster who dresses like a nerd just to be different and “writes random poetry to express himself”, poetry that is truly awful and meaningless, I hasten to add.

It’s no real leap of logic to discover that a new breed of pseudo-intellectual lives in the upper echelons of high management and bombards his staff with weird business argon that nobody understands, and that his peers pretend to understand.

I am disappointed with myself because this type of pseudo-intellectual has been with me my entire working life. I have found myself in meetings with people from various companies, all trying to impress upon everybody else how important and intelligent they are,  while speaking utter jibberish to bamboozle us all.

In their eyes, their peers are thinking “Wow! This guy really knows what he is talking about. We must do business with him.”

The truth is rather sad. People actually think “What in the name of all that is Holy is this ballbag talking about? It makes no bloody sense.”

Such verbal diarrhoea is responsible for many a rant from yours truly but, more importantly, inspired Scott Adams, then a disgruntled employee, to create the now massively famous Dilbert cartoon series.

At this point, I have to add that some of my work colleagues have said in the past that I bear a striking resemblance to Dilbert – judge for yourself.

Dilbert

Plastic Mancunian

I have never met Scott Adams so their theory is nonsense.

Anyway, here are a couple of typical Dilbert cartoons that illustrate the point.

The idea of setting up a buzzword bingo card has appealed to me for years but the problem is that business bullshit is an evolving beast with new terms popping out of the bull with alarming frequency.  This means that lowly employees like me would have to keep on top of these new terms and this is a full time job that I don’t have time to pursue.

Here are a few new ones:

“I want to jump on your radar!”

“Thought leaders”

“Idea sherpa”

“Punch a puppy”

“Thought shower”

These are terms that make me want to cringe with embarrassment.

Many years ago, there was a comedy show called Drop the Dead Donkey in the UK that had a character called Gus Hedges who basically used bullshit to communicate with his staff. Some of the terms he used were laughable – and now over 20 years later, the terms he used actually sound more believable.

Here are some of his best lines:

“We've got to downsize our sloppiness overload, Joy. Am I making myself clear?”

“There is just something I'd like to pop into your percolator, see if it comes out brown.”

“I'm setting you free. Free to roam the high seas of enterprise as the buccaneers of our broadcasting future.”

“I'm in major cellular rejuvenation mode, fast-tracking my way to eternal biological viability.”

“I think we have a slight togetherness shortfall here.”

“You see, when it comes to sexual interfacing with the female gender group, I've always been caution-orientated due to ongoing problems of an adaptive nature regarding the gooiness factor on the physical front.”

“Jill, could you come for a brief scuba in my think tank?”

“We're merely running our bulletins through the cappuccino machine of innovation, see if it comes out frothy.”

“Just a thought I wanted to pop into your fishbowl to see if it blows bubbles.”

“Problems are just the pregnant mothers of solutions.”

The good thing about Gus Hedges is that he is totally fictional. Sadly, there thousands upon  thousands of pseudo-intellectual managers who seem to have adopted him as a role model. Some pseudo–intellectuals like to quote philosophers; other like to quote Gus Hedges.

To conclude, I found a business bullshit generator that may act as inspiration for any pseudo-intellectuals desperate to climb the corporate ladder with no talent other than their use of meaningless vocabulary.

Here’s a couple I generated:

Synergistically streamline enterprise-wide collaboration and idea-sharing

Compellingly envisioneer standardized "outside the box" thinking

Uniquely reinvent sticky vortals

Have a go yourself – follow this link.

The Hipster

I quite like eccentric people, particularly those who are genuinely intelligent and slightly odd. You know the kind of person I mean; somebody who is so intelligent that they don’t have time for things like fashion, style, mainstream hobbies and conventional culture.

My kind of genius

Sadly, there is a particular breed of pseudo-intellectual that tries to emulate these eccentric geniuses by being odd just for the sake of it. These people are known as hipsters. I’m sure you have heard of them.

During my life, I have encountered many flawed geniuses who simply don’t have the time or patience to worry about their dress sense, hairstyles and don’t feel the need to become a normal social animal, choosing instead to immerse themselves completely in the subjects that fascinate them.  

For example, a university professor with wild uncontrolled hair whose fashion sense was born (and remains) in the 1960’s or the computer nerd who spends every waking hour on his computer devising amazing software for fun and, when he’s not fully engrossed in that will plunge into hours of science fiction and become an absolute expert on everything relating to Doctor Who, Star Trek and Lord of the Rings.

I like these people.

My kind of genius

Over the years, people like this have started to get more respect and others are seeing the light, choosing to embrace them rather than mock them.

Hipsters are latching onto this and trying to portray themselves as – well – weird – but in a cool, fashionable and trendy way. I know for a fact that they are pseudo-intellectuals because, unlike flawed geniuses, the only things that come out of their mouths is a blend of philosophy and bullshit.

Hipsters go one step further – they purposely go out to make themselves stand out as eccentric. They actually fail miserably though because the genius will not spend a fortune on his weird attire and has no desire whatsoever to attract people to them because of their unconventional dress sense.

A hipster is the kind of person who will go to a pub and be positively thrilled that his fish and chips is served in a bucket or his full English breakfast comes on a shovel.

Hipster Breakfast

Hipster coffee

Hipsters look down on people like me who like conventional things like sport and rock music, although they will be interested in my travel exploits, particularly to the more exotic places I’ve had the good fortune to visit.

You see, the hipster tries to portray himself as a cool, open-minded intellectual who is fascinated by everything and anything, as long as it is avant-garde.

A hipster will dress in, frankly, weird clothes – the weirder the better.  

His musical taste is bizarre. Your typical hipster will buy a record full of Peruvian pop songs (even though he doesn’t understand Spanish). Note – it has to be a record that he can play on his 1970’s record player because a CD is too modern and mainstream.

The hipster will also like to portray himself as an intelligent creative genius who will try his hand at absolutely anything from writing bizarre poetry to playing weird instruments. He is the kind of person who will buy a penny farthing and voluntarily go to underground theatres to watch strange meaningless plays. His house will be full of bric-a-brac that he “found on his travels” but in reality cost a small fortune from Camden Market. He will also not understand anything he owns, says or creates, but will boast about it all using philosophical evidence to back his long descriptive words, which will make no sense to truly intelligent people, impressing only those who are trying to be hipsters themselves - pseudo-hipsters if you like.

The hipster will want to travel where his heart takes him, choosing to visit strange countries with nothing but four hipster T-shirts, a pair of sandals and a pair of garish crazy shorts. He will acquire strange tattoos that he claims came from local people who rarely see tourists because, of course, a hipster simply cannot go to a place where conventional people go! Oh no! That wouldn’t be cool.

Travel Hipster

You see, hipsters are a paradox. They like to portray themselves as outsiders and social pariahs but the only reason they do so is to be cool and popular socially. They love to bore you with tales of their exploits.

Here are some things you may hear a hipster say.

“You’ve never heard of Emilio Lugazi’s authentic Chilean classical jazz masterpiece “Soy la evolución del mono y la máquina”? It is exquisite!”

“Oh this tattoo? It means “I am eternal light!” in Thai. It is the work of a 92 year old elder in a remote village near to Chiang Mai. She did it for nothing because she liked a poem I wrote for her.”

“I’ll have the Messy Combo Vegetarian Burger with Melon Fries and Mustard Mayonnaise please. No, it’s fine if it comes on a roof slate. It’s more authentic that way.”

“Here’s a novel I wrote last week. It’s about a woman on a journey of self-discovery in the caves of Izca. I wrote it on a typewriter in Cossack’s Coffee shop. It’s called “The Imagination Cube”. I don’t want to sell it; I needed to write it for my own self-discovery.”

Finally, if you still don’t recognise a hipster – here are a few photos I have found on the web.

Finally, if you want to annoy a hipster, all you have to do is imply that they are now mainstream. For example, if you ever see a hipster typing poems on a 1960's typewriter in Starbucks while drinking his latte out of an avocado skin, just say, within his earshot:

"Wow! Writing your own poetry in Starbucks. That's so mainstream. There's a guy in an independent coffee shop on the High Street, who's just parked his penny farthing outside and is tattooing his arse with original poetry while singing traditional Uruguayan opera. And what a beard he has - five feet long, and dyed in the colours of the Brazilian flag. What a cool guy!"

He will freak out, I promise you.