In Which I Am Mad About Words

There's this meme that I've been seeing making the rounds on the twit-tumble-facebook-and-generally-teen-girl-o-sphere lately that people seem to be having a lot of fun with. As anyone who knows me personally will attest, the concept of others enjoying themselves causes me deep personal offense, so I figured I'd try and take the piss out of this one post-haste. Please, come with me on a trip. Journey with me as I take a moment to explain why I find this thing that other people like to be thoroughly dumb and why your disliking it also will lead to your  being a smarter, healthier, more devilishly attractive person who has lots of sex.

The meme goes like this:

"That awkward moment when [universally relatable uncomfortable situation occurs]."

And the reaction to one of these generally goes like this:

"Yes! This is an uncomfortable situation that I too have often found myself in! It is good to know that someone else has made similar social or personal faux pas as well! Indeed! Our bonding over our comparable level of social incompetence (or often the social incompetence of others) is most assuredly a laughing matter! Tee Hee!"

That... That's how these things talk to each other, right?

As someone with no idea what makes anything funny, even I can tell that as far as comedy goes this "joke" has about the same chance as making any intelligent person laugh as a three-legged racing horse with Parkinsons has at winning a blue-ribbon. I don't even know if horses can get Parkinsons, but if they made a movie about that it would probably win a couple of Oscars.

The entire joke hinges on the brackets up there being filled with something other people can relate to. They say it's funny because it's true, after all. The problem comes about when you start post "Awkward Moments" about something nobody can relate to.

"That awkward moment when my grandma and I went camping and we forgot our canteen."

HA HA HA HA.

Which leads me to my biggest complaint about this stupid, stupid, dumb, stupid thing: These people don't know what the fuck "awkward" even means. It is not an "Awkward Moment" when your go to make a sandwich and you don't have any mayonnaise. Fuck you! It's an inconvenience! It's annoying! It's a reason to use mustard, but it's not fucking AWKWARD!

awk·ward/ˈôkwərd/

Adjective:

Causing difficulty; hard to do or deal with: "one of the most awkward jobs is painting a ceiling"; "some awkward questions". Deliberately unreasonable or uncooperative: "you're being damned awkward!".

American youths have a fucking obsession with "awkwardness" which has morphed essentially be a synonym for "uncomfortable", but it's gotten to the point where they won't even let it mean that. "Awkward" has become another word for "bad thing" because they heard someone they know say it once and never bothered to Google the word to see what it actually meant.

That's where it started. Now they're playing this ridiculous game of darts with the English language where they grab a handful of "awkward" and fling them at the wall hoping at least a couple will still stick to the board.

-The Management

P.S. This is the debut of a new Label for Meaningless Meandering that I like to call: "Bitching About Trivial Bullshit". 

P.P.S. I feel like I'm going to have a lot of these.