045: Let's Dance to Joy Division
Hey there friends,
I feel weird about sending this one out. It is, on the one hand, something I feel strongly about. On the other hand, I’m aware I’m risking an internet pile-on, and I don’t know if I have the emotional bandwidth to be screamed at by strangers on the internet right now. But it’s the only thing I can think about, so here we go.
This week in Internet Outrage, everyone is (or was) mad at a poet for saying that there is no such thing as synonyms.
The whole thread and all the responses to it are fascinating because I think they show the huge divide between writers and non-writers in the world. It’s also one more point for reveal of the difference between specialists and laymen, like the discussion currently raging about semantic creep. (Read “If Everything is ‘Trauma’ Is Anything?” in the New York Times for more on semantic creep. Then go read Cultish.)
To me, Jay is right, and so is the writer of that NYT article. Saying that someone is ‘love-bombing’ is not the same thing as saying someone is ‘hot-and-cold’ or saying that someone is ‘too friendly.’ People use them interchangeably right now, but they mean very different things, and when you point out specific examples, most reasonable people will probably agree they’re not the same. At least in those three examples, the behavior might look the same to an outsider, but the motivation isn’t, the pattern isn’t.
In the thousands of responses to Jay, there are people pointing out that the easiest way to prove he’s right is to have anyone use a thesaurus to rewrite their favorite song.
So I tried it out—because I actually disagreed with Jay at first. I thought of all the times I have successfully used a thesaurus to look up synonyms and thought, “What on Earth is he talking about?”
One of my favorite songs these days is “Let’s All Dance to Joy Division” by The Wombats. The lyrics are pretty straightforward, so I decided it would be a useful song for this exercise:
Original Lyrics | Thesaurus EditionI'm back in Liverpool I've returned to Liverpool And everything seems the same It all resembles something cloned But I worked something out last night Yet I wrought an object away yesterday evening That changed this little boy's brain Which transformed this young lad's intellect A small piece of advice One teeny morsel of guidance That took twenty-two years in the making Which took me 22 years to understand And I will break it for you now Moreover, I can reveal it to everyone immediately Please learn from my mistakes I hope you'll gain from my bloopers Please learn from my mistakes I hope you'll gain from my bloopers Let's dance to Joy Division Authorize us to gambol with Joy Division And celebrate the irony Plus laud the satire Everything is going wrong Lock stock and barrel are turning bad But we're so happy Nevertheless, our group is delighted
It’s not the same! It’s terrible! It’s hilariously awful, in fact.
Because while all the words I used mean very similar things, they don’t mean the exact same thing. A thesaurus, used improperly, could suggest they’re interchangeable. A bad teacher could too.
There’s an episode of Friends where Joey runs into a similar issue based on Ross’s bad advice:
"They're humid, prepossessing homosapiens with full-sized aortic pumps."
It doesn’t make any damn sense. It’s hilarious but completely ridiculous when read out loud. And yet there are plenty of people out there giving the same bad advice Ross gave.
Because Jay’s right—words aren’t interchangeable. Teaching people that they are leads to moments like Joey signing his name “Baby Kangaroo Tribbiani” or calling something Communism when you mean Socialism or when you actually mean any sort of social safety net.
I ran into this while promoting the most recent episode of my podcast. It was on Edward VIII, the only man to have ever abdicated the English throne—and he did it for love. (D’awww.)
He also, in the 1930s, supported the National Socialist German Workers Party, which well all know went on to become the Nazi regime. Edward had always supported workers’ rights, which caused him a lot of problems with Parliament, which was dominated by more conservative voices. He was also deeply against Communism. In the early 1930s, Hitler’s promises were pro-worker, anti-Communism.
As Prince of Wales, Edward went to Germany in 1935 on an official state visit. He was lied to the entire time he was there—he wasn’t shown the truth of what was happening. Because no one in Hitler’s regime was talking about the truth behind 100% employment or the forced displacement of German Jews. When news slowly started to trickle out of Germany about this and the concentration camps, most people dismissed it as Communist propaganda from Russia, including Edward.
In 1937, post-abdication, the Duke of Windsor went again and was lied to again. In his visit, he was kept in tightly controlled places where they could control the narrative he was seeing. Once again, Edward couldn’t have seen the truth. Others didn’t see it yet either—Winston Churchill congratulated him on the success of this trip!
Most people now say that Edward is a Nazi sympathizer because of this. They dismiss anything else he accomplished (which was a lot, for a 325-day reign) based on these two trips.
They ignore the nuance of historical context. They ignore that after he learned the truth of what was happening, he condemned it. They ignore that he, then in his mid-40s, spied for England during WWII.
Whenever I tried to say anything about the Duke of Windsor on Twitter, I got shouted down by people who were upset I wasn’t calling him a Nazi.
But he wasn’t one. He was pro-worker and anti-Communist. He was also racist, yes, we can easily call him that. (His official biographer happily does.) But he didn’t support genocide and wouldn’t have gone to Germany if he’d known that’s what was happening.
It wouldn’t be until the Allied forces invaded Germany and found concentration camps and took photos that people started to realize the depths of depravity and cruelty that the Nazi party had sunk to. There were rumors of it beforehand, but people dismissed it as propaganda.
80 years later, we have all the benefits of hindsight but little compassion or thoughtfulness for the context and nuance of a historical moment. The lack of nuance we’re willing to see—the way we make every situation black and white—means we have to condemn everyone. Instead of allowing the complexity of nuance to enter a conversation, we blunder through with imprecise generalizations, which helps no one.
Because of the natural slippage of language plus the echo chambers of social media that encourage dramatic stances, people use Nazi as a synonym for conservative now. It’s is a dangerous and slippery slope. Not all conservatives are neo-Nazis. To call them that erases the truth of what conservatives want—which you’re free to agree with or disagree with, but if you disagree with them that doesn’t make them a Nazi.
We need nuance. For poetry and for history and for good song-writing. It’s important that we don’t lose the delicate (or hammering) differences between our words. Teaching people that words are interchangeable is a disservice to all of us.
Normally I’d include a link to things I’m reading here, but I’m a bit burnt out on everything right now. I’ll be back with book and internet recommendations in my next essay!
Until then, check out the recent episode of Unruly Figures! I thought creating it was going to kill me because there was so much information about Edward VIII’s life to sift through.
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I love this song.
With you!!