Let’s Get Typical

Many years ago, when I was in elementary school, I remember reading a list of ten rules a writer should never break, and every sentence broke the rule it described. Cubist painter Pablo Picasso once instructed to “Know the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”

One of these rules was to “Avoid cliches like the plague.”

We’ve all heard cliches in everyday speech. My favorite is “draw a line in the sand.” I have an inside story for that, which you would be delighted to hear. I don’t wish to relay it publicly to protect the privacy of the saying’s most infamous (ab)user.

Clichés can indeed serve the writer well if he or she knows how to employ them effectively. However, one runs the risk of destroying perfectly good narrative should one too many of these nasty things creep in.

The cliché is a literary device dating back nearly two hundred years, first adopted as printers’ jargon for “stereotype block.” What makes it so tricky is that it introduces a structure by which your characters and narratives must abide. When you put your own words in a box, they begin to lose effectiveness.

To test this theory, study your television and call it a toaster. Keep calling it that, and before long, you will have somewhat convinced yourself that it is indeed a toaster. When you believe it is a toaster, you can start attaching other labels to it. “The communist toaster burnt my toast!” Before long, the words you have used to describe your television set have lost meaning, because you have misused them. In reality, there was no toast involved and if it did get burned, perhaps you spent too long staring at the TV. If that happens to you, please know that I will not refund your money or buy you a new loaf of bread.

Clichés are so named because they have been so overused that they no longer have meaning and you can use them to describe literally any situation.

This is part three of my series on words and phrases that should disappear from our social media lexicon.

If you are a casual reader of social media comment sections, you have likely run across the phrase “Typical (insert ideology here).”

The fill-in-the blank ideology refers to the television in the theory I concocted above. By itself, it is inane and useless, but then when modified with words like ‘typical,’ the phrase loses its meaning entirely and leaves the one who shares said thought looking foolish.

I, of course, take issue with the word ‘typical’ in almost every approach, because it attempts to eliminate nuance and cram everything into a neat little box. Writers can avoid use of the word ‘typical’ by examining all traits and deriving a mean from the data studied. In scientific studies, typical would be described as the expected result of an experiment based on the known parameters and data. In real practice, such as polling and media, typical doesn’t exist.

I have never been a typical anything, so why should I attempt to attach that label to others? Every individual has his or her own beliefs, life experiences, and interests. Calling someone ‘typical’ effectively removes the traits that make that person unique. Remember the saying “you are unique, just like everyone else?” It is a comical and ironic statement of truth.

When used to dismiss another’s point of view, the descriptor not only loses its meaning, but also attempts to satisfy the commenter’s inherent bias by removing aspects of personality that he or she may agree with just to make the supposed offender look bad.

Those who fling around words and phrases that have lost all meaning allow fallacies like rhetoric and hyperbole to replace solid reason. In the end, those who do so make themselves into something else I abhor—caricatures.

If you don’t want people to put you in a box, why would you put yourself in a box? Attempting to live by the “typical” standards of an archetype removes all your best traits and replaces them with a caricature.

If you don’t know what I mean by ‘caricature,’ picture in your mind the “typical” standards of a NASCAR fan. Does he have a beer gut, a few missing teeth, a mullet, excessive facial hair and wave the Confederate flag? If so, he is a caricature. If he doesn’t want to be described as a “typical NASCAR fan” then perhaps he will use judgement and conscience to adopt more diverse interests.

Mind you, I’m not saying it is a bad thing to have a narrow set of interests. If that is what you enjoy and don’t feel the need to branch out, you are perfectly free to not do so. It is entirely possible to do that without adhering to any kind of stereotype.

By now, perhaps I have you thinking about the logical fallacies you commonly see on the internet and devising ideas to challenge them. If so, my article has succeeded. If you’re still accusing your television set of being a “typical toaster,” you may want to seek mental help, or the customer service number for Samsung. I can hook you up with the former, but with Samsung, I’m afraid you’re on your own.