It's not an extremely commonly used phrase but sometimes when you throw out a big word people will call them "$5 words." I don't really know the origin of this phrase but, it kind of got the gears turning; what if words really did have a monetary value? Well it would be losing value exponentially. In the same way that light pollution blocks out the stars; word pollution lessens the impact of nearly everything we say or hear. Take for example a love letter; in the olden days that alone could win the heart of a prospective (literate) maiden. You ever try to write someone a love note these days? I've seen two people do it in my grown life and it didn't woo anyone; it was just openly mocked by the recipient and all of her friends on both occasions. Strange thing is we even have many more options available in the ways of getting a message of love to a potential mate: we have email, cell phones, land phones, post mail, MySpace, Facebook, Match.com, Zoosk, eHarmony. Honestly now text messaging your intentions will do you just as good as any of these other options. What the hell are you even going to say anyway? Anything that you think is coming from your heart probably was in some Kate Hudson/Matthew McConaughey romantic comedy already.
Point is that the English language is only so vast, and now more than ever, it is thinly spread across so many millions of things. Think of how many words you hear, read, and say every single day. If you're like most Americans you probably watch about two hours of TV a day, give or take, think of how many ideas are presented to you. For ten minutes you are watching Jesse Katsopolis try to impress his biker friends while Danny Tanner is trying to fight the feelings for the coworker that replaced his old co anchor who is on maternity leave pregnant with Jesse Katsopolis's child while D.J. Tanner is trying to fit in at school leaving Michelle Tanner to be neglected. Then we are interrupted by an ad showing gangster Boost Mobile is, then we are told how if we don't check our credit score we will end up working at a Red Lobster for the rest of our lives, and then we see an ad for killer super-evolved piranha, and then Flo from Progressive... So in roughly 10 minutes we have been bombarded with so many words, very socially complex scenarios, and emotions we were supposed to have associated with them. After three of these intervals then we completely shift gears when we see Dr. House treat a man for Anthrax only to realize he also has Flesh Eating Bacteria but he got Dysentery from the Anthrax treatment but the Dysentery treatment will make the Flesh Eating Bacteria grow faster... And this is our recreation; add in a highly stressful job with equally stressed out people and then come home to a family trying to cope with their own myriad of problems...
Eventually our eyes become so glazed-over and our mind becomes too overwhelmed that almost nothing can get through. The shame is the people that matter to us most are the ones we see after we are overloaded at the end of the day. But how did this happen? Look back at the turn of the century, before silent films you would only be able to see plays maybe go to a saloon and hear some music and maybe a new book comes your way every couple of months. But these are really the stimulus that even comes from somewhere besides your small social community and they would probably be pretty few and far between. Now-a-days we have movies; often we have a dozen to choose from, and even the least wordy movie probably has at least 100 pages of dialogue. In the past the music was limited to a few records or whatever music the musicians of the community knew; but now you almost don't even meet a person with an iTunes library of less than 1,000 songs. And as for books, there are so many we need a best seller list or an Oprah book club recommendation before we even decide they are worth our while to read. At my last job I remember coming off of a 1 day vacation to over three hundred new emails; and then I realized, in a normal day I look over 300 emails. Obviously, not all were for me specifically but I had to at least look over them. Unless you're really famous and get tons of fan mail, or you are Santa Claus, at what point in history would one person be receiving 300 pieces of mail a day? And advertisements... we are bombarded by them. I think the idea of subliminal advertising is almost absurd; think of how many LIMINAL advertisements we have to ignore on a given day. Even in the room you are sitting in right now turn your head 360 degrees and tell me you don't see at least one thing that is used for advertising, see just how far you have to turn before you see a corporate logo of some kind, if you want to melt your brain count how many words you see on the nearest object to you. I'm holding in my hand a 12 oz. bottle of water (very small bottle) there are 171 words on it and it contains water. I tried to count the words on a bag of Skittles but my head started hurting. And a Blockbuster receipt for two videos totalling $6.48 probably has more words than this entire article. It's word pollution...
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