Buzzwords that I'm totally over - "vulnerable"

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

It seems like over the last few months my reading list has been swamped people extolling the virtues of being “vulnerable”. Sometimes “raw and vulnerable”. Sometimes “real and vulnerable” In fact, these two phrases roll off the pen as a unit often enough that I suspect everyone’s just copying off things they’ve read, without actually engaging brain in between

I’ve been trying to figure out why this bugs the living shit out of me.

I’m pretty sure that one reason is that the people who speak so approvingly of their ‘ability’ to ‘choose to be vulnerable’ aren’t actually vulnerable. Vulnerable, after all, mean ‘easily damaged’. Abused children are vulnerable . People with depression are vulnerable. Homeless folk are vulnerable. I’m pretty sure none of these people are running round saying ‘yay! I’m being vulnerable! That’s so great!’

Vulnerability fans will no doubt protest at this characterisation on the grounds that that’s not what the phrase means. It means being honest with someone about your feelings. To which my first reply is , well, we HAVE the word ‘honest’, knock yourself out.

And my second reply probably takes me into the second reason I can’t stand vulnerability talk, which is that it assumes that when you’re ‘deciding to be vulnerable’, the main issue at hand is you and your emotions. Actually what I find in my little corner of the world is that I have a number of friends and family who have … big emotions about stuff. Much bigger than mine, to be honest. My life often seems to be filled with vulnerable people. They’re exhausting. They need a bunch of looking after. And if you spend a bunch of time looking after other people’s emotions, well, honestly, you might as well just add yourself to the list and be done with it.

Anyway, rant inspired by the fact that I just had an email from a new minister at my church checking in with a bunch of us about how we’re doing in these Covid times. ‘Reaching out’, as they say. And finishing with “it’s so great in these challenging times that we can be real and vulnerable with each other”. Which is nice and caring and all, I guess. Except that my first interaction with this dude was me asking for something from him and getting a crap useless answer, then asking for the same thing again and getting NO answer, then asking for the same thing a third time, then being surprised when, after the thing didn’t eventuate, I approached him with ‘hey, I really need this thing to happen’ and he was all surprised that I had a problem.

I’m pretty sure that “Mate, I hardly know you, what little I do has been kind of mediocre, you don’t actually want to know about my emotions because they’re unexpected weird ones, and you just confirmed me in my suspicion that people who think in buzzwords suck” is not the kind of raw honest reaction he was really fishing for.

Feel free to agree with me, tell me I’m full of shit, or rant on about your great example of a buzzword that needs to die in a fire. I’m easy.

2

How do you feel about “at risk” ?

3

Don’t you mean “at promise”?

4

Here in the States I’ve been hearing “vulnerable” for so long that I’m inured to it. I don’t know if there’s any new psychobabble – there probably is – but, to somewhat sidetrack the discussion, the advertisers have lately been working on the verb “to curate.” Reducing it to the only verb they truly understand, that is, “to sell.”

5

With all the polital shit sprouting wings and flying around in crazy circles, people really really, I mean REALLY need to understand what “impeached” means.
~VOW

6

Ooh, yes, that’s a good one! I’ll definitely be adding that to my list of “phrases that will be first against the wall when the revolution comes.”

7

I don’t like vulnerable because we are all vulnerable.

Reminds me of a quickie interview I saw with a local sportsball coach whose star player was sidelined with an injury:

Reporter: “So, he’s day-to-day?”

Coach: “Aren’t we all?”
mmm

8

I’m going to go with “tasked,” as in: “Fred was tasked to antigravity development.”

No. Ten years ago this use didn’t exist. Ten years ago it would have been: “Fred was assigned to antigravity development.”

9

And a similar bit of corporate-America blather: using “ask” as a noun, meaning “assignment” or “requirement” as in “That was perhaps too big an ask for Fred.”

10

Yeah, gotta admit, I always have been a bit ambiguous about vulnerability as a virtue. I mean, I can understand the importance of not being always on guard with shields up and your game face/stage mask on, of being honest and open both to others and to yourself about how people and things affect you. That I need to avoid toxic pseudostrength/pseudoconfidence and pretending that nothing can hurt me. But at the same time, can’t shake off the learned meaning of “vulnerable” and the notion that you do not expose weakness gratuituously.

Not just corporate. “What is our ask”, to mean actually “what are we asking for”, has been standard usage in the federal appropriation levels for years. Took me a while to develop a tolerance for it.

OTOH the evolution of “to assign a task” into “to task” did not grind on me nearly as much, it somehow sounded more natural.

11

“Invulnerable” was the thing when I was a kid. Now we all face red kryptonite. How come nobody asks what Tramp’s kryptonite might be? But I digress. In modern usage I like “because” with “of the” or “it is” stripped away. SDMB is kewl because smart peoples. Why, that almost makes me feel young!

12

Gift is not a verb.

13

I’ve got a good one for today - humbled.

Victoria Beckham being 'humbled’by being looked after well in hospital is a good recent example. I was sure I’d seen similar from BoJo under the same circumstances but apparently I’m conflating that with his reaction to winning the last election

Of course, what ‘humbled’ as an intransitive verb really means is “I’d like you all to remember that generally I’m pretty high status, and the fact that in this case I need to be grateful to some lower-status folks should in no way detract from that fact”

‘Grateful’, people. Or ‘thankful’. Those are perfectly fine words, which anyone gets to use

14

The OED attests to gift as a verb since the 16th century. It’s also an adjective (gift horse), adverb (giftedly sprinting), and the grammar-gifted may know of other forms. BTW the ME root also means poison. Cyanide is a gift to the tortured. Yikes.

15

Not a buzzword but a buzzphrase-- you don’t seem to hear it as much anymore, but I used to hate the phrase “at the end of the day”, meaning “when all is said and done”. I’ve heard the phrase used in a business setting more than once where it wasn’t clear from context if they were speaking metaphorically or referring to the actual end of the business day.

16

“The optics aren’t good.”

17

I’m totally over the phrase “totally over”.

18

golf clap

19

I’m curious about the OP’s reading material, because while I come across that usage from time to time, I hardly recall running into it at all over the past year or so.

I join you in despising this phrase.

Onboarding. As in “we’ve got a new hire that we’re onboarding.”

It doesn’t even save you any words - you could just as easily say, “we’re bringing a new person into our branch.” And it would sound like normal English, rather than soulless corporatese.

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“Let’s circle back to that”

“going forward” (though I must admit I’ve been guilty of using this phrase at times :o)