I am not a millennial hater. In fact, I employ a few. I’d say they’re worth every rupee, but I don’t pay them that much. While most of them are entitled beings of privileged upbringing walking about on two legs with no sense of responsibility or the ability to handle pressure, some not only show promise but also deliver. And yet, the one solitary thing that millennials are exceptionally good at is murder.
Maybe I should use the plural here because they haven’t stopped at one but gone on to decimate all sorts of things, trends, careers and counsels. And they are the better for it. If anything, I’m jealous of them for being so up-front and forward. If I’d had that kind of chutzpah when I was that age, I would never have had to eat another bowl of greens for the rest of my life. Instead, I merely succumbed to parental pressure and the ‘good for my health’ nonsense.
But back to the omni-cide (killing of everything, in Latin, made up by me). The latest proper English term to have become a casualty of millennial causality is the term ‘immersive’. The word, as defined by a dictionary, is used to describe something that surrounds the audience/user/viewer so that they feel a part of the performance/experience, be it real or virtual.
But this word has been made a brutal daylight hack job of. Today, it can be loosely applied to practically anything. Nothing is superficial any more. Skin-deep and shallow are bad terms, especially in the cosmetic industry where they charge you a tonne of money for body creams that allegedly hit deeper, much to the chagrin and befuddlement of surgeons worldwide. Everything is immersive nowadays. Why can’t one just skim the surface? Will I really manage to delve into the intricacies of pottery-making in a two-hour class? How about the 45-minute immersive movie critiquing session?
Today, one doesn’t just travel in a car, it’s immersive journeying from point A to B. You don’t merely eat food and drink wine, it’s an immersive gastronomic experience for your olfactory and taste buds. Please guess what an immersive experience in digestion used to be known as — going to the toilet.
I don’t even think it’s simply euphemistic, this usage, trying to soften the content of conversations by employing words that convey a less corrosive imagery of what is trying to be communicated. I will give you a minute to absorb that one; consider this an immersive rumination of my rant!
I think millennials have severe attention span issues, so much so that barely a few minutes of their lives spent doing something amounts to a world of experience that’s worthy of going on to their CVs. Contrast this with us who slaved away for hours to merely earn the approval of our elders. But then we also let them feed us vegetables for dinner, so that doesn’t say much for either party here.
Nevertheless, there should be a ruling on this because while millennials kill language, they are also quick to adapt new terminologies. So from now on, nothing that is shorter than a week can be called immersive.
Given the fast-paced lives that most youngsters lead, I understand why they won’t last for the duration of any programme that spans seven days. Which is why they are free to replace the adjective with a new one I’m giving forth — ‘tedx’; just 20 minutes and it counts.
Unless you are an extremely slow reader, this has been a Tedx session on the apt usage of ‘immersive’.
This column is for anyone who gives an existential toss.