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"It is a happy talent to know how to play."

Forget "Moist". "Unpack" Is the Most Terrible, Cringe-Worthy Word of ALL Time.

6/4/2017

7 Comments

 
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Want me to lose your audience's attention immediately? Then drop the u-bomb. 

"Let's unpack this."
This is, like, literally, the most annoying word/phrase in the English language.

It is way worse than vagina, even though I once wrote an entire blog post about why I hate the word vagina -- and believe me, it's a terrible, terrible word.
​In Latin, the word "vagina" literally means sheath or scabbard. 

First of all, I'm not in fifth grade, so I don't really appreciate a crass analogy being used to name a part of my body.

Second, fuck that shit. I refuse to define a part of my body as a function of man's "sword." Read more >
It's so bad, it's almost as bad as telling someone they "look tired." Which, as I wrote recently in Unless the Next Words Out of Your Mouth Are Going to Be, "Can I Help ___?" Do NOT Tell Me I "Look Tired," is an extremely rude and stupid thing to say to someone.

And it's definitely worse than the word "moist," which is infamous for having... weird connotations? Few words in English elicit such strong aversions in so many people.

Though, personally, I have no problem with moist. At all. It reminds me of delicious cookies and cakes. 
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Like, what? Do you want them not to be moist?

Do you like your cakes and cookies to be hard and dry?

Then you're a weirdo. 

So what, exactly, is the problem with "unpack"? Why does it make so many people cringe?

Even though two of the last five books I've read (James Pennebaker's The Secret Life of Pronouns and Benjamin Bergen's What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves) were about words... I don't entirely know. 
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What about this stupid use of the word "unpack" evokes pure, unbridled rage?

It could just be associations. Many reasonable people have come to associate "unpack" with insane, regressive social justice warriors, who use the phrase, "Let's unpack this" to explain things like why all men are basically rapists (even if they're not) or why objectivity is oppressive ​(who cares about expertise, when some 17-year-old has "lived experience") or that there is such a thing as "sexual prejudice" (there isn't -- there is only sexual preference). 

Maybe it's because people who use the word "unpack" often use lots of other meaningless jargon, and you can't even argue with them because they're not presenting ideas and content, just long strings of trendy social justice words.
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Maybe it's about arrogance. Maybe people who tend to say "unpack" say it because they believe they are so much more enlightened, intelligent, or whatever than you, that they need to "unpack" your own opinions and beliefs for you. 

Often, people who want to "unpack" things for you have no respect for your personal choices or autonomy. For example, consider Everyday Feminism's recent post, So You Got Called Out On Social Media By Someone Who's More Marginalized Than You. In it, ​Jacquie Fuller discusses how, if other people have less oppression than you, your job is to shut up and apologize and agree. 
You feel it rising up inside you: The But-But-But.

The But-But-But is the part of us that needs love and affirmation and belonging so badly, we’ll put its needs above everyone else’s.

It’s the part of us that screams “But not me!” and “#NotAllWhiteFeminists!”
The diatribe continues (after telling us what TV show to watch -- because "self-care," right? -- and what kind of tea to drink and how to decorate our house and to masturbate): 
​Call an intersectional white feminist friend who will help you unpack what you’re feeling (I’m here for you!).

Do Not:

  1. Defend yourself.
  2. Respond with anything other than, “I hear you. I’m listening.” And maybe, “Thank you.” (If you respond at all.)
  3. Call up a non-intersectional white feminist friend to commiserate about how ridiculous feminism has become since The Millennials with their trigger warnings got all touchy about everything.
  4. Private message your black (brown, queer, disabled, immigrant, etc.) friend, insisting that they defend you, explain themselves to you, educate you, help you unpack your feelings, or do any unpaid emotional labor for you.
"Unpaid emotional labor." That's a funny one. I'll have to save that for later. 

In short, people hate the word "unpack" because they associate it with SJWs trying to force their opinions in place of facts. 

Which, actually, makes total sense. 

See, in one of my psycholinguistics classes, I learned that people say pretty much exactly what they mean, and follow a basic set of rules, or maxims (Grice's Maxims, to be specific) in their communication.

We are as informative as we possibly can, and give as much information as is needed, and no more.

We try to be truthful, and do not give information that is false or that is not supported by evidence.

We try to be as clear, as brief, and as orderly as we can in what we say, and we avoid obscurity and ambiguity.


Calling "unpacking" anything but unpacking would violate these maxims.

You can't say, "Let's discuss this," because you're not looking for a discussion.

You can't say, "Let's analyze this," because you don't want to analyze it -- you want to justify and over-justify your opinion.

You can't say, "Let's have a rational back-and-forth," because it's not rational -- it's emotional. And it's not a back-and-forth, either. 

And saying, "Sit back and shut up and listen and agree while I talk about my opinion like it's a fact and 'call you out' if you disagree with me," is so darn wordy -- "unpack" conveys the exact same message in only two syllables. 

Which is why, typically, when someone wants to unpack anything that's not a suitcase, I feel instinctively wary. I've learned, from my lived experience, that there's no point in trying to engage.

​That's not what "unpacking" is about.
7 Comments
Jadzia
6/5/2017 01:12:41 am

I have seen far too many articles, often from writers who were once committed skeptics, on what to do if you're called out that will not address the possibility that you're critic might be wrong. Marginalised people's perceptions must be accepted without question but you cannot know your own, thoughts or motivations.

This is one of the nastiest developments because they are demanding absolute submission and want white women to accept being treated like shit (I don't think they actually treat non-white women any better if they dissent but they are less open about that). Is that what feminism has become? Come and join us so we can treat you like shit and then when you object you can be told that your objections are a sign of how privileged you are (even if you are not at all privileged in the sense that most people understand the word). No thanks.

Reply
Liz
6/6/2017 07:49:29 am

+1000 to this comment. Women are not a privileged class anywhere in the world, but the SJW police would have you believe that it's a sin for any white woman to have an opinion on anything ever. They should be reminded that being white has never prevented women from being assaulted, paid less, raped, pressured to adhere to beauty standards, cat-called, denied an abortion, or anything else you can think of. It's the same with "cis," a meaningless word that tries to paint women as the oppressors of trans people. If being a "cis" white woman is all it takes to free yourself of male violence and oppression, then why do "cis" white women continue to face the same problems that all women face? The fact that women in many countries face ADDITIONAL threats (FGM, for one) does not negate the common burdens all women share by virtue of their biology.

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Zane
6/5/2017 06:05:35 am

http://thehardtimes.net/hardstyle/pretty-sweet-just-added-phrase-lets-unpack-vocabulary/

Reply
Tone Police
6/5/2017 12:44:11 pm

LOL... you've done it again. I HATE "unpacking". "Emotional labor" is also becoming a popular SJW/Tumblrina phrase.

Example of usage: "I don't have a job, but making fifty character rants against white people (or cis, het, men, whatever they feel like generalizing against) is a form of emotional labor and you should pay me!"

One of my favorite SJWs is Kitte Knight of Eugene, OR. (you'll see in a second why this is relevant to "unpacking"). She used to work for IBM, but got laid off recently. She had a good job, worked from home mostly it seems, as she spent much of the day on angry SJW tirades against whitey. FYI: her boyfriend is white, like Leslie Mac's husband! After her layoff, her therapist advised her to try and make money off a blog, as "so many people love your angry FB rants!" Or at least this is Kitte's interpretation of the advice. Simultaneously, she is planning to leave the country (good riddance!) soon and has a one-way ticket to Scotland as the first stop in her world tour to "escape American racism".

While I don't want to downplay a non-white's person fears at the Nazi shit going on in this country, I think Kitte is a little... offbase? First off, she regularly rants about why she "can't even leave her house due to all the racism". Certainly, there is a white power element around Eugene. However, MOST residents are not freaked out or angry at seeing an Asian woman at the super market! However, I don't think that Kitte realizes that people DO take second looks at folks who go out into public the way she does. See pic at below link...

http://tinyurl.com/ybhfl4xr

Unpacking... Kitte is ALL ABOUT the unpacking. She even named her blog "Extreme Unpacking", because of course, everyone loves her unhinged, bigoted rants and will surely pay her enough on patreon to compensate for the loss of her cushy IBM marketing job! This is her funding plan for her grand World Tour. She plans to stick her nose into other countries' business, and record the whole thing on social media.

Here is her pricing scheme (I shit you not). I swear, the white woman SJWs who buy into this shit are like BDSM masochists. Also, the highest priced option used to be something different. It was $5000 for VIETNAM VETS to make amends for what they did to her country (Vietnam)! Listen, I get that the Vietnam was a tragedy and a mistake, but this bitch and her parents probably got out on a boat, and were LUCKY enough to make it to the USA, where she eventually got a good marketing job at IBM!

So she decides to "unpack" her shit on Vietnam Vets, one of the most abused elements of this society. Talk about "entitlement and privilege"! I suspect somebody sane called her out and that one and she pulled it, wish I would have taken screen captures.

http://www.extremeunpacking.com/

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Chris Crepon
3/22/2019 08:10:28 am

I only started to notice this annoying trend about a few months ago for some reason. probably first game upon it when listening to some podcast hosted by leftist pseudo intellectual types. Now it's gotten to the point where even respected rabbis I listen to like rabbi tovia singer are saying it while explaining Judaism. It's really annoying and I'm glad someone pointed it out you're the top result on Google perhaps we should unpack that.

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9/20/2021 05:26:30 pm

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Nice piece. By which I mean nice piece if writing.

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