hyperbole hitlist – prelude

In an exciting and frankly earth-shattering new feature, I shall endeavour to obliterate instances of the current tendency towards hyperbole.

(do you see what I did there?)

I’ve been intending to do this for ages, but somehow never got around to it. Well, I shall dither no more! The time for a crusade against ridiculous over-emphasis and exaggeration is now, and – it appears – I’m the man for the job.

For too long have politicians, advertisers and marketing fools, the business community and – to an increasing degree – the general public got away with thinking that using powerful and emotive words on subjects that simply don’t deserve them will somehow lend them an air of authority. Wrong! In the words of Bill Hicks, “let me be the first to [BANG!] burst that fucking bubble”. A spectacular sunset viewed from the peak of Mount Everest is (I imagine) “awesome”. A funny video on YouTube is not. Coleridge writing Kubla Khan in an opium-fuelled haze is “genius”. Pranks played by Ant & Dec on Saturday night telly are not. Do you see where this is going?

So, here’s the plan. Every time I come across a fresh example of the tendency towards hyperbole, I’ll document and expose it here. er … that’s about it really.

So, there we go. Now that I’ve started this off I’ll try to keep it going, until I – or perhaps you – get bored with it. To that end, upcoming highlights I intend to tackle will include:

• awesome, as in “dude, that cheese sandwich is awesome”
• passionate, as in “cheese sandwiches are our passion”
• genius, as in “that move you pulled in Gran Turismo was genius”
• artist, as in “Britney Spears is a leading pop artist”
• copious, as in “lets go out on Friday and drink copious amounts of alcohol”
• etc etc

If you’re one of the small handful of people who read this blog, please feel free to send me more irritating exaggerations, or examples of the use of some of those listed above. Ta very much.