The grossest misuse of superlatives

Is it only me or is it everybody else, that normally, speak in superlatives only these days?

The adjectives have never had it so good. If you do not get a hint of what I wrote so far, just remember the number of times, in the recent past, you have yourself said, or heard somebody else say, words like “Amazing”, “Awesome”, “Terrific”, “Great”, “ Pathetic”, “ Terrible”. In a world where relative comparison has lost all sense of magnitude, if you like something, it turns out to be amazingly “Amazing” at all times and invariably “Gross” or “Pathetic” vice versa.

Superlatives are cool today. Rest assured, they will become cooler and coolest in the future. Using comparative or simple, on the other hand, are being thought of as “commonplace” and uncool. Uncool, but, doesn’t mean hot. Being hot is again, cool man. I do not quite understand this paradox, but who cares! To be cool, one creates paradoxes, not understand paradoxes.

Being branded ‘uncool’ (I repeat, not to be confused with ‘hot’) is the ultimate means of discrimination possible. Come to think of it. Discrimination based on race, color, gender and nationality is all-bygone. The new ‘cool’ way of building walls between people is by using the ‘cool’ factor. I reckon, this discrimination will only get more torturous in the days to come. And using simple forms of adjectives is damn uncool, beware!

Let me hypothesize my theory.

Scenario 1 [Reality: The party was really great.]

X: “How was the party last night?”
A: “Amazing. Just Great”

Scenario 2 [Reality: No booze for the first half an hour, but better ‘DJ’ing later]

X: “How was the party last night?”
A: “Amazing. Just Great” (If your inclination to music is relatively, more than booze)A: “Pathetic. It sucked” (If your inclination to booze is relatively, more than music)

Scenario 3 [The party was really bad. No booze at all. Pretty Sorry ‘DJ’ing]

X: “How was the party last night?”
A: “Pathetic. It sucked"

Scenario 2 is what I build my theory on. Most responses would be in the way that A has responded. There will be exceptions, of course. There will be a set of people, the bunch of objectivists, lets call them A¢, who still answer X’s question like, “It was a good party”, or “The party yesterday was worse than the one I went to the last time around, spare the good ‘DJ’ing”. How would X, in turn, respond to such an answer? In most cases, X would say, “Oh! OK”.

On the other hand, usage of superlatives creates a perception that one has a strong opinion based on the underlying event. That one does not possess second-rate opinions. That one is intelligent enough to express his feelings in as little as one word.

Who would not want to be cool? Of course, some objectivists don’t. But, some of these earlier objectivists would defect into the cool spectrum and every other party, for the rest of their lives, is either “Amazing” or “Pathetic” to them.

If you, as a reader, is of the opinion that my observation about the increasingly ‘cool’ use of superlatives is not accurate, then in all probability, you are an objectivist - an A¢. And you’ve two roads in front of you. One is to stay an A¢ and face responses like “oh!” “Ok” “Great” “Pathetic” (In the future, X’s response to your own objective reply would turn to a single superlative, because he will be one of the cool bunch then.) The other is to take the ‘amazing’ road to use (misuse, rather) the most stupendous or grossest superlatives in your conversations, to vie for the “I am the Coolest” title.

Rate this Observation Article by Shyam:
Pathetic *Amazing ***** (Terms and conditions: The author reserves the right to throw any other rating into his ultra cool ‘dustbin’)