At Roughly Drafted, you can attempt to read "Secret iPhone Details Lost in a Sea of Hype and Hate," an article about why some sources are not very enthusiastic about the iPhone, and why they are wrong. I don't have a dog in this fight, because I prefer actual fights, and I don't let my dog do the fighting for me. As far as I can tell, the article is a list of bad things some other websites said about an imaginary product called the iPhone (I've never seen one in real life, have you?) followed by some pointed rhetorical questions implying that these websites are secretly biased, lying Microsoft-lovers, followed by links to other Roughly Drafted articles about how Microsoft sucks. Swell. I guess that's how they roll here on the Internet. I accept that. But I want all writers everywhere, even the Internet-level writers, to stop using "a perfect storm" as a metaphor for "shit went down," because it is perfectly stupid.
Sebastian Junger over there made up the phrase "perfect storm" to describe a pretty bad storm, although it originally described his three square meters of face stubble. Shit went down, and soon the phrase was a book, and then a movie, and then an irritating thing people say when shit goes down. I guess the idea was that some weather patterns coincided to make a situation that some sailors found inconvenient. Boo fucking hoo. There already was a cliché for that: "Events conspired." Why make a new one?
First of all, it's a confusing way to use "perfect." You can use "perfect" to mean "complete" or "unqualified," but be careful using it to describe something that's actually bad, and can never really be complete. If I call someone a perfect idiot, I'm really just emphasizing how much of an idiot they are, not saying that they finished Idiot School and now have their M.F.I. or whatever. Affixing "perfect" to sucky things works better in speech, where you can play around with tone of voice. I don't like the way it looks on the page. I awoke screaming from a perfect nightmare. Even though I start with "awoke screaming," not a good sign, "perfect" still weakens the impact of "nightmare." What I mean is, "perfectly awful nightmare," which also suggests that my nightmare was that the Queen said something truly devastating about my silver service, embarrassing me in front of my devoted gentleman's gentleman.
Metaphorically, a storm tends to be a bad thing. It's sudden and violent. But "perfect storm" gets applied to things that are merely inconvenient, or silly trends, or opinions. Those aren't storms, not even metaphorically. That's just a writer trying to make his boring article sound dramatic. Do you know how writers come up with trends? One of their friends comes up with an anecdote, and the writer Googles two other incidents that are similar, then grinds out an article about the hot new trend that's sweeping the nation. If you put together three things that are kind of pointing in the same direction, they don't magically become some world-changing storm of activity. Similarly, it's not that amazing if different pressure systems encounter each other and have some kind of cumulative effect. That's called weather. Waves do that all the damn time. Two waves moving in the same direction can amplify or cancel each other out. It's the hot new trend in wave interaction, a "perfect storm" of amplification, and you read it here first!
For me, the only meaning "perfect storm" has is, "I'm a lazy writer," or, "I'm trying to sound smarter than I am." It's a sign that I can stop reading or listening. It's like saying you don't believe in evolution. I once got in a long discussion with a guy who didn't believe in global warming until he mentioned as an aside that he didn't believe in evolution, either. I realized I had been wasting my time assuming we would actually come to some common ground about global warming. After that, I liked him more, because he moved on to a lot of elaborate talk about Creationism and I could just pretend to pay attention. I bet he liked me more after that point, too. The next time you hear about a perfect storm, relax. You're in no danger of encountering a storm. Or perfection, for that matter. Someone's just trying to piss on your leg and tell you it's raining. Metaphorically, that is. If someone actually urinates on your leg, don't just take it -- that's somewhat rude.
Beautiful. Clunky, way too long, and the best part is that all those words add up to absolutely nothing. Game reviews always mention graphics but almost never provide specific images. "A few years out of date." Can't you just picture that? However, it still works because as we all know, once time forgets a laboratory, the actual surfaces and lighting effects start to look antiquated. Did you ever see a lab from, say, 1986? You know, those old EGA laboratories, which had only 16 colors.
Sebastian Junger
