"For years, once-vibrant technologies, products, and companies have been dropping like teenagers in a Freddy Krueger movie. Thank heavens that tech journalists have done such a good job of documenting the carnage as it happened. Without their diligent reporting, we might not be aware that the industry is pretty much an unrelenting bloodbath. . . . [A] moving recap of some of the stuff that predeceased the Web–you may want to bring a handkerchief."
That's from Metafilter, where one commenter sums it all up:
Death is dead!Actually, no -- another commenter says:
Declaring things dead? Very much alive.See also "What's Wrong with 'X is Dead.'"
One thing that's not wrong with "X is dead": I'm sure it's great at generating web traffic -- even to an article entitled "The Web Is Dead." Never mind that the article is premised on a ludicrously misleading graph.
2 comments:
There's also the "those days are gone for good" phrasing:
"many real estate experts now believe that home ownership will never again yield rewards like those enjoyed in the second half of the 20th century."
From yesterday's NY Times, "Housing Fades as a Means to Build Wealth, Analysts Say."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/business/economy/23decline.html
There's also the opposite: the "more and more these days" tic. Every problem must be described as "increasing" -- which is apparently exempt from the usual journalistic standards about checking facts and supporting assertions with evidence.
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