Quote · Modern Wisdom
Black Holes, Denny’s Fist Fights & Japanese Handjob Culture - Rabbit Hole #4 - #1118
Where this was said
Should We Invent Our Own Language?
At 1:07:38 · chapter starts 59:47
George Mack explains that inventing new vocabulary activates a specific cognitive process: a coined term can compress 5,000 words into two and make the idea transmissible. His first coinage — 'fly dripping' for urinating on a toilet seat — led to a broader practice. He introduces two new candidates: 'Kesha's Law' (never embed modern cultural references in creative work because they age catastrophically, illustrated by Kesha's P. Diddy lyric problem) and 'MJ's Law' (talent so transcendent it overrides moral judgement — evidenced by a judge nodding his head to Billie Jean during a pedophilia trial). Tim Ferriss adds 'teladultery' (watching a shared series ahead of your partner) and 'hallucinatives' (people who accept LLM outputs as fact). Tim Urban argues that his most viral ideas — the dark playground, the Instant Gratification Monkey — succeeded precisely because the term nailed the concept: cancel culture, he notes, shifted the entire culture war by labelling a vague feeling with a sticky two-word phrase. Tim Ferriss pitches 'bigoteer' for someone who weaponises accusations of bigotry for personal gain.
The term 'cancel culture' didn't just name a phenomenon — it exposed and undermined it by making it visible. Tim Urban argues that coined terms like 'dark playground' go viral not because the idea is new but because the label makes it graspable. The highest-leverage act for any ideas person is naming things well.
