Many years ago, when I first got to New York, I noticed something strange.
Huge skyscrapers, but none of the buildings had a thirteenth floor, elevators had buttons for twelfth and fourteenth but nothing in between.
I mentioned this to an American.
They said it was because thirteen was considered unlucky, so they didn’t have a thirteenth floor.
I said, well they still had it, it was called the fourteenth floor, but it was still actually the thirteenth.
They also did away with 13 on door numbers, they just went from 12 to 14, they didn’t have a 13 because people considered it unlucky.
All over New York they’d done away with the number 13 because it was unlucky, so just change it to 14 and that solves the problem.
I couldn’t get my head round it, they’d changed the name but they hadn’t solved a thing.
The richest, most modern city in the world behaving like children: ‘stick your fingers in your ears and pretend it’s not happening’.
What they called the fourteenth floor was still actually the thirteenth, but people seemed happy enough as long as the name was changed.
This was my first encounter with language being more important than reality.
If you can’t change the facts, change the words.
America led the way in this, what we used to call dustmen weren’t called that anymore, now they became ‘refuse disposal operatives’.
A dustbin became a ‘household waste receptacle’.
At the airport, I asked an American porter where the men’s toilet was, he shook his head and said they didn’t have those.
I had to remind myself I was in America and things aren’t called what they really are.
So I asked him for the ‘bathroom’ (even though I obviously didn’t want a bath) and he immediately pointed out the men’s toilet.
I find this all very Victorian, the belief that the actual name of things might offend our delicate sensibilities so let’s call them something more genteel, then we can pretend things aren’t what they are.
For instance, I get confused when Americans speak of the ‘middle class’, what they actually mean is what we would call the working class, but it’s less offensive to pretend they are in the middle.
Changing the name of things is what happens when we don’t want to engage with a problem so we alter the language.
Advertising and marketing are of course riddled with this.
To avoid thinking, we simply change the language to something that disguises any problem.
For instance, the people who write briefs used to be called planners, but that made their job sound dull so they changed their name to ‘creative strategists’.
The briefs are still as dull as ever, but now they can feel better about their job.
Recently, I saw a planner who listed his job as ‘Chief Vibes Officer’.
Many planners are so bored with their jobs that they put most of their creative thinking into disguising what they do.
I’ve seen: Data Storyteller, Brand Curator, Marketing Architect, Truth Engineer, Creativity Analyst, Initiative Executive, Chief Inspiration Officer, etc, etc.
Imagine if they put that much thinking into their actual job, imagine how much more creative the briefs would be.
Imagine if they put all that ingenuity into solving a problem, instead of putting it into disguising the problem.
Imagine if they used dull words and clever thinking, instead of using clever words and dull thinking.
Politicians are also masters of this. Calling a casino a casino isn’t right because we teach kids not to gamble. So it’s called a resort. I think Vegas started this nonsense and the rest of the world just did a “monkey-see-monkey-do.”
Bloggers are ‘journalists’. /s 😉
Those with cerebral palsy used to be called spastics, but that was unacceptable, so they changed it to disabled, then differently abled, then special needs.