These Are a Few of My Favorite Clichés

“Snowclones” are a templates for cliché, and therefore discouraged by, for example, official journalism style guides. I love them. My current favorite, “the existence of X implies the existence of Y,” has been spinning around as a series of Twitter jokes for quite some time now:

The existence of an oubliette implies the existence of a larger, scarier oobly.
The existence of biscuits and Triscuits implies the existence of the elusive moniscuit.
The existence of casual sex implies the existence of ranked competitive sex.

Buzzfeed’s got a pretty good roundup that includes more of those, and also one about “deleting my dating apps because I want to meet someone the old fashioned way” (he throws giant parties for me in hopes I’ll show up and stares at a green light on a far away dock)/(feigning madness and accidentally stabbing her father while avenging the death of my father, the King of Denmark)/etc.

Long and/or Thoughtful

Donald Antrim on suicidal ideation, hospitalization and ECT – Movingly written description of a journey out of darkness
Cicadas, loss, and caring for your estranged sister’s children after her sudden death – Not actually a super long essay but you may need to sit with it for a minute after you read it
NYT deep dive on history, power and civil liberties in Taiwan and Hong Kong – A lot of things I did not know about Taiwan, colonialism, and the fault lines that may define the next couple decades of geopolitics
A Society of Holiday Inn Express Guests – On the nature of overconfidence online and the need for everyone to shut up and listen for once
The Transhuman Olympics – A blog called “Applied Divinity Studies” on why we should stop worrying and learn to love doping (see also: snowclones)
The Parallel Parking Job that Ignited the Internet – A great exploration of vitriol and context collapse