Because
Last year I noticed an unfamiliar linguistic construction going around
the internet. It takes the form <situation> + "because" + <noun
phrase>.
Here are a couple of examples from the wild:
"Feminism is dead because mommy blogs"
"I'm getting sucked into some family drama that I won't blog about because, hello, drama."
and here are a couple I made up:
"I majored in computer science because parents."
"I failed my last weigh-in because ice cream."
I know these examples are not particularly noteworthy, but I have not been compiling examples (because laziness) and the construct is not particularly easy to grep.
Unlike many Internet meme phrasings, I am fond of this one. When done well:
- the construct is witty: as with a riddle or joke, we piece together the noun and situation to make a connection.
- it conveys a lot of information in a few words: the image we piece together is often vivid in our minds.
- it is short and to the point.
Unfortunately, the construct became corrupted quickly. Somebody
thought it would be a good idea to replace the noun phrase with
"reasons", as in the following example:
William Gibson's books are great and you should all read them, because reasons.
Maybe this is cute the first time you hear it. The joke works because the original construct conveys a lot of information with a noun phrase, and this corruption uses the same construct to convey no information at all. But the joke wears thin quickly. It is just a new way of saying "Just because", or "because I won't tell you why". Let's compare and contrast:
- the new construct is not witty: everybody just steals it from someplace else they found it.
- it conveys no information at all.
- It is still short, but not to the point.
- It depends on the utility of the first construct to be funny, and as it wipes out that construct it gets less and less funny.
In other words, it is useless and not funny -- pretty much the polar opposite of the original meme. So please don't use it unless you are trying to convey your lack of originality and wit.