The Chris Effect

There are many phrases in our culture that I just don’t understand. I don’t understand why, when the first person who uttered the line, no one called that person an idiot, and subsequently that person wasn’t chastised or shunned or thrown into a place for others like themselves and segregated from the rest of the populace for the good of said populace. But mostly what I don’t understand is that no one else questions the logic in these sayings.

“Less is more” is one of those sayings. Less is more. Is it? Is it really? No, it’s fucking not. Ever. You want to know why? Because it’s less. More is more because it’s more. Less, quite the opposite of more, does not indicate in any way that more is accounted for. The only way less is ever more, is when it’s more than much less. But that’s irrelevent in the context. Think about this: if less is more, then they’re basically the same thing, right? Less is equal to more. The two are interchangeable. Now you go and ask for more pie and see if they give you less – you know, because what’s the difference? Kind of like how fat chance and slim chance mean the same thing.

Now I know what the argument is: it’s all figurative. Well then go on and argue it and see how far you get. Less is more what? Less of a beating? Less of a fine to pay? Less time in traction? Ah, how about words? People like to think that less description is often better. People like to tell me I talk to much. A picture is worth a thousand words, apparently. Yeah, well a thousand words is also worth a thousand words, and for people like me those thousand words are way easier to write than painting a bloody picture. And if I took the time and effort to paint a most assuredly shitty painting, it would take a thousand words to describe just what the hell I was trying to paint in the first place. It would defeat the whole purpose. Literal or figurative and everywhere in between, less is never more. Less description is still less description. Fewer words are still fewer words. And less is still less, not more.

Now, “More for less” is a simple enough statement. More shit for less money. Easy. But less is more? That completely throws a wrench into the very definitions of these words. It rapes our knowledge of the English language and tries to teach us the opposite of what we know.

Less is more only means that less of one thing could mean more of another, which suggests that the saying needs a little more context to convey properly.

What I do understand is that stupid phrases like this are one of the reasons why the English language is supposedly one the hardest in the known world to get a firm grasp of.

This entry was posted on July 23, 2011 at 00:09 and is filed under Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.