The Memecidal Maniac

Language is flexible. You can use it to convey all manner of ideas to other people. In general, this is a good thing. But it also has a dark side. Language may be used to spread ideas that are, in a single word, wrong.

I am not referring to those ideas that are inaccurate, or imprecise, or even incorrect. Those lurk harmlessly in discredited articles, long-forgotten papers, and deleted data. No, I am specifically addressing those ideas that are so heinous and vile that they are able to leap into a person's cortex, appropriate their mouth and fingers, and spread, without any conscious thought. They are memes. They are evil. They must die.

It is hard to kill a meme. For good memes, such as the Scientific Method, that quality is beneficial. But in the bad ones, that makes our task practically Sisyphean. I did say "our", because you are going to help me. You will do it. For truth, liberty, and justice, you will help. For honesty and integrity, you will help. For cute babies and cuddly puppies, you will help. For a brighter future for all mankind, you will help. You have no choice. Humanity can never prosper under the evil yoke of The Wrong.

So here is your task. Read about The Wrong here. You must know your enemy. Drive these memes with great prejudice from your own mind. Next, be alert for the presence of The Wrong in your friends, family, and business associates. If you detect any traces, immediately fling the host directly into the nearest star. Or, if you like, you may instead attempt to disabuse that person of their ill-conceived parasitic memes.

Evil Memes That Must Be Destroyed:

Greengrocer's Apostrophe's

The apostrophe has several uses, and all of them are easily enumerated. Its use in possessives, contractions, and abbreviations is acceptable. Using it to pluralize common English words is WRONG!

The Election of Hitler

Hitler was never elected. He used the rising power of the National Socialist Party to force President Hindenberg to appoint him to the position of Chancellor. After Hindenberg's death, Hitler seized the Presidency and fused it to the Chancellorship to form the dictatorial office of Fuehrer. The notion that Hitler was elected is WRONG!

Like, You Know?

Some people have a habit of interjecting meaningless null phrases into their speech. This usually takes the form of "um", or "uh". Voiced nulls are a means of maintaining priority in a conversation while the speaker's brain works to feed more words to the mouth. At best, this is unnecessary; at worst, it is rude. If you have nothing to say, say nothing. But worst of all is when your nulls masquerade as meaningful phrases. Stop saying "you know" with every sentence--it's WRONG!

Monopoly is Fun

Monopoly is a board game trademark owned by Hasbro. There are hundreds of variants, most using exactly the same core game mechanics as the Hasbro game. There are many reasons why, but investing the same amount of resources required to play Monopoly into nearly any other game will yield a better experience for all people involved. Playing Monopoly when there are better games available is WRONG!

Try And

You should never try AND do something. It is far better to try TO do it instead. Or better yet, just do it. As Yoda said: there is do and do not; there is no try. And if you try AND do, he will leap across the hangar deck in a single bound and try to cut your meme-infected head from your shoulders with hot green plasma. Try and be WRONG! ...is WRONG! Whatever. Stop doing it.

The Amazing Journey

Read 1984. In the dystopian portrait of the future, IngSoc controls threatening ideas by removing expressiveness from the language. Thus the words "horrible", and "awful", and "terrible", and "ruinous" are all replaced by the simplified construct "doubleplusungood". It was called Newspeak in the novel, and it has arrived. While Orwell's characters might have used "doubleplusgood" as an all-purpose strongly positive adjective, people in the real world utter the word "amazing" with astonishing and alarming frequency. (Furthermore, they are also likely to describe a wide variety of events that have nothing to do with travel as a "journey".) This dearth of vocabulary occurs across multiple channels that push news and entertainment content out to the public, and is so widespread that I would almost prefer to believe that it is the result of a conspiracy, rather than accept that America has become so incredibly stupid that it collectively knows only one adjective that is better than "good". Stop saying "amazing". Say any other adjective whatsoever. Anything that might prompt someone to hop off their chair and check a dictionary would be better. Amazing is amazingly WRONG!