Bad Form

The John Ralston Saul post has just reminded me to have a rant about a phrase that seems to have become increasingly common in usage amongst young adults/ twentysomethings...

On Good Form

A "I saw B today."
C "Oh yeah, how was she?"
A "Yeah, she was on good form."

This is an exchange I hear far too often, and it honestly makes me wince. I think that there are several things going on here, some more universalisable than others.

Social acceptability by appeal to a fashionable and recognisable term

Examples of this include:

Rock up as a synonym for arrive
Take it easy as a way of saying goodbye
Kip over as a synonym for stay/ sleep over (verb)

I'm certainly not immune to this type of behaviour, but at least I know what's going on. Luckily some of my friends will pick me up on this and mock me accordingly...

Bite-size summation

Closely linked to CM's theory of the one-sentence summary i.e. that we are all afforded a single phrase by each other which can be given as a response to the question, "What's B like?" (the most bland of which would presumably include the word nice. I hope I'm never described as nice in other people's one-sentence summaries).

Where the one-sentence summary is pretty static, often frustratingly so if you feel somebody has you all wrong, the bite-size summation has the potential to be far more dynamic. Most importantly though, its scope is often limited to a shallow inference by its subject: "She made a couple of funny jokes so she must be happy"; "He didn't say very much so he must have things on his mind"; "She scrutinised the bill so she must be uptight". What makes you so sure? Did you ask how she was really doing? Have we lost the ability to communicate?

People as a means to an end

I think that many people are generally uncomfortable with other people's problems and unhappiness (or should I say discontentment). I also think that this is largely because first, many people are so afraid of consciousness and responsibility that they would rather suffocate their minds with material distraction to avoid the possibility of contemplation on this kind of level (I'd like to thank the Academy... and Pascal...), and second, as pointed out by Mr. Saul, people now see the pursuit of mindless and selfish hedonism as a god-given right: tales of woe are seen as a pollutant.

By saying that B is on good form, you give the public exactly what they want.