Lately I noticed that every time people find some niche topic in which they can specialize they develop their own jargon. This seems to be a natural process that occurs because when such specialization occurs, there is an increased need to facilitate better communication. Acronyms and buzzwords are born to avoid explaining the same things over and over again, and allow to streamline the exchange of ideas. These jargon terms introduce standard baseline of communication between experts.
As a side effect, it makes the conversations between experienced gurus inaccessible to general public, and newbies due to the artificial jargon barrier. People using technical intricate jargon also may often sound sophisticated and knowledgeable.
For example, you have the technical jargon used by most computer scientists and technology professionals. You have the business jargon used by the marketroids and pointy haired lower primates in managerial roles. They usually talk about things like synergy and paradigm – and we usually ignore them completely. You have MMOG jargon used by people who like to “aggro ftw” or go “leeroy jenkins” :P
Recently I was surprised to find that “players” or “pick up artists” also have a very complex and technical jargon. For example, I found out that apparently I am AFC prone to oneitis, or that when you talk with a woman you should do allot of kino, anchor positive feelings on yourself and elicit values so you can mirror them back to her. :mrgreen:
Seriously, check out the whole website. It is a fascinating insight into a mind of a pick up artist. I don’t think I have ever seen such in depth explanation of pick up techniques, and methodologies. Some of these things actually read like actual tech related manuals. After browsing through some of of the articles there, I realized that what these guys are doing is taking classic social engineering techniques, expanding them, and applying them to dating scenarios.
I might be wrong, but I think some of the advice on the site is actually good, sound advice like being confident, positive, avoiding downer topics and etc… Some of it probably should be taken with a grain (sometimes a big grain) of salt. All in all, it is quite an interesting read.
Now I’m interested to see what other niche topics have such highly developed jargon vocabularies. I’m now on the lookout for those mysterious and elusive fields of expertise that I never knew, or heard about before.