Tautology: noun the saying of the same thing twice in different words, generally considered to be a fault of style; a needless repetition of an idea, statement, or word This definition and this example are both tautologlies, they both needlessly repeat the same idea.
Tautologies amuse me. The quirky self-reference of them almost always gives my head a quick spin. and whenever I can, I try to find them.
As part of my daily routine of not doing any work, I tend to spend a lot of time surfing the web. Very rarely do I actually encounter something amusing or witty (and even more rarely, a good tautology that manages to note itself as one), and, more often than not, most of the things I read just annoy me (upon rereading this sentence, I realized "more often than not, most of the things..." is a tautology itself). Most of the things that tend to annoy me are pieces that strike me as hypocritical, or hypercritical, or just overly politically correct.
Take, for example, this blog post from someone at Princeton:
" Along with these paper advertisements were business card ads for a female freshman running for class president. On the right side is her name, the position she’s running for, and her slogan “Looking to have a good time freshman year?” accompanied by “Don’t be Square, Vote for [redacted]!” On the left side of the business card is a photograph of a shirtless male on top of a shirtless (but bra wearing) female. The picture seems to suggest that they are either about to engage in sex or are already engaging in sex."
"These campaign business cards portrayed sex as something that everyone’s doing, and that you should be, too. Or else you’ll be square."
The piece goes on to bemoan the over-sexualized view of college, and what a shame it is that our hookup culture has taken over so strongly, and isn't this a great example of pluralistic ignorance, where everyone assumes that everyone's hooking up when really the majority are not?
And the piece annoyed me.
It annoyed me first because I thought that was a funny and clever way of getting attention for a completely pointless election, and I rather enjoyed the ad.
It annoyed me even more because it struck me as hypercritical. I felt the author was reading far too much into a silly little freshman election.
It annoyed me because it seemed overly politically correct. The author didn't bother to say what she really felt, but clearly implied: that the hookup culture and college sex in general is degrading and inappropriate. I would have more respect for the author if she had just come out and said it. I would have disagreed with her, but her bluntness would have been refreshing. However, the last comment on the post was refreshingly scathing and witty:
"What is a “square”? Someone conventional. But on the card, sex is associated with not being a square, with not being conventional. The natural conclusion to draw is that having sex is not considered conventional.
Yet you draw the opposite conclusion, that the card implies that the conventional thing to do is to have sex. Why? Because we all know she didn’t chose the word square for the nuances of its definition, she chose it because it rhymes with her name. What she really meant was something like “loser”. In which case your analysis is less bizarre.
“Loser”, however, is an accurate description of students who fail to attract the opposite sex. Men who attempt to attract women but do not succeed are losing out to other men. They are literally losers with respect to women. Romantic success is, I’m willing to guess, very important to college students, so being a loser with respect to the opposite sex more or less amounts to being a loser, period. So, the candidate’s card is really a tautology: if you aren’t hooking up with the opposite sex, you are, in fact, a loser."
I found that rebuttal absolutely excellent for the following reasons:
1. Early on, the commenter pointed out how silly the entire article was: "Because we all know she didn’t chose the word square for the nuances of its definition, she chose it because it rhymes with her name." It's a freshman election, no one cares about it now, or ever will again. Creating a brouhaha over it is pathetic.
2. The commenter revealed accidental hypocrisy inherent in the post. "The natural conclusion to draw is that having sex is not considered conventional.
Yet you draw the opposite conclusion" Almost no one is intentionally hypocritical, which is what makes it so entertaining when you find out someone is a hypocrite. Now, I'm not saying that the author hooks up and then bemoans the hook up culture on her blog. The hypocrisy I refer is the far more annoying "matyred minority" variety, where someone is convinced that he or she is making a last righteous stand for some pet cause that the masses have long abandoned. Here, she is convinced she is one of the few public voices trying to stop the massive onslaught of conversation about sex. But sex is not considered conventional. Despite its prominence in our society, it still is considered scandalous and taboo. That's the only reason the ad made any waves at all. Far from being the last defendant of public morality, the author is just another random hack. And, the commenter managed to convey most of that in the two sentences quoted above, the brevity and subtlety of it making it all the more biting.
3. Finally, the commenter makes a tautology reference. I love tautology, largely because I accidentally engage in it all the time.
I am a member of that Facebook group and I read XKCD. (comic from Randall Munroe's XKCD #703)
"Men who attempt to attract women but do not succeed are losing out to other men. They are literally losers with respect to women. .... So, the candidate’s card is really a tautology: if you aren’t hooking up with the opposite sex, you are, in fact, a loser."
So, with one short comment, some random troll on the internet turned some idiotic fluff piece that annoyed me immensely and gave it an amusing and distracting skewering. I salute you, random troll. And yes, "random troll" is a tautology.
