Pumpkin Spice Permanent Wave Grunge (or, word salad pt. 1)
Last year when Spotify Wrapped came out, it included a new, awesome feature: video messages from your Top Artists thanking you for listening.
Mine was from boygenius, who informed me (very adorably) that I might be gay:
"What's the worst part of having boygenius in your Spotify Wrapped?"
"Telling your family you're gay."
badum-tsss 🥁
This year, nobody made me ANY videos, and instead of showing me fun things like where my musical self should live (Burlington, VT, home of the gays I guess), Spotify showed me two half-assed “seasons” of my listening journey, one in February and one in April.
Guess what my April genre was?
No really. Guess.
Ohhh, sorry. The answer we were looking for was “Pumpkin Spice Permanent Wave Grunge.”
Which brings us to the topic of today's extended Coffee Break: WORD SALAD.
Have you heard this term before? It often shows up in debunking spaces, like anti-MLM content, wellness scam exposés, and cult documentaries. Political pundits use it to criticize a candidate’s debate performance—and they also use word salad in their own commentary. What a time!
Word salad can creep into your own writing, too—especially if you have a weird job that’s hard to explain, or you work in coaching, mental health, or wellness spaces where the results you deliver sound vague on the page.
Like everything else in the world of writing (and marketing), intention matters. So does honesty. But we’ll get to that.
The original definition of word salad comes from psychiatry: unintelligible, extremely disorganized speech or writing manifested as a symptom of a mental disorder (such as schizophrenia) (Merriam-Webster). It’s also sometimes referred to as schizophasia.
Word salad is something I’ve heard my ADHD friends talk about, too—the ideas may be firing on all cylinders, but when you try to articulate them, all that comes out is a Beautiful Mind style jumble.
(Which, by the way, is a great reason to work with an editor.)
In modern internet speak, word salad refers to a strung-together series of words, usually found in marketing copy, that sound good but don’t actually mean anything. Think of a coaching program offering “a proven process to transmute subconscious resistance into magnetic abundance." Or "a linguistic fireworks display of pure technical mastery over a complex subject."
One of those was written by ChatGPT.
One was from Tony Robbins.
Can you guess which is which?
No?? THAT’S MY POINT.
Here’s one more example from the real world. This is on a product page for something called a “harmonizing” water bottle:
Restores any water to its most beautiful energetic state so you can have better water wherever you go.
Harmonizes and vitalizes your water, returning it to its natural energetic state and removing any negative energy it has absorbed
Restores your water's beautiful crystalline, as found in nature, so your body is better able to assimilate and utilize its beneficial, health-promoting properties
Okay, yes. I am side-eyeing the entire idea of this product, but that’s not really the point. The point is the writing.
Could you tell someone else what this water bottle is/does? Would you be able to answer any follow-up questions they might have?
Like:
But HOW does it restore my water to its natural crystalline state?
Also… what’s that?
Does my Brita water have negative energy? 🤔 Why?
Notice how it still sounds kind of good though, right? Who wouldn’t choose a water bottle that helps your body be “better able to assimilate and utilize [water’s] beneficial, health-promoting properties”?
This copy has all the defining characteristics of intentional word salad (or at least, conscious confusion): it sounds smart; it’s vague; and it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.
Ready for an interesting tangent? Too bad, ‘cause we’re going on one. 😄
When I was researching this piece, I tried searching #wordsalad on Instagram, hoping for some pseudoscience-y wellness claims like the water bottle above. Instead, I found thousands of posts about how to deal with a narcissist.
In an emotionally abusive relationship, the “narcissist”* will often use word salad as a form of gaslighting. When you press them and ask clarifying questions, the narcissist gets defensive and makes it seem like you’re the one with the issue, like you have some kind of block that’s preventing you from understanding—when in actuality, they’re the one who isn’t making sense.
This makes you doubt yourself, question your own instincts. And if lots and lots of other people seem to have nooooo problem with what this person is saying, you feel even more alienated.
From there, it won’t take much to get you to stop asking questions. If you’re the only one with a bad feeling, then maybe the problem really IS you.**
Huh. Feels kind of like we’re at a Tony Robbins event, doesn’t it? 😏
If this sounds exactly like that weirdly toxic, crazy-making relationship you had with a previous coach or service provider, that’s because it IS.
I can think of two well-known, sought-after service providers who both had large audiences and loads of internet clout a few years back—but behind the scenes, it was all blown-off deadlines, creative work that missed the mark, and combative responses to feedback.
For a small fish like me, that kind of performance would have tanked my reputation. But for the big names out there, the name is their protection. As the unhappy client, you get shouted down by their 600,000 devotees; you second-guess your own dissatisfaction.
If so many people LOVE this person, then you must be the one who’s wrong—right? And because you’re afraid of poking the bear, you stay quiet. That way you never find out about all the other dissatisfied clients this person has left in their wake.
I can feel myself circling around a bigger thesis here. One that speaks to the culture of narcissism made possible by internet celebrity, and the rot that’s slowly eating through the über-capitalist ethos of online business… buuuut let’s bring it back to the writing. 😵💫
So far, we’ve been looking at *intentional* word salad.
I would argue that the Tony Robbinses of the world are very much aware and intentional in their use of word salad. So too are the political pundits. In those cases, the word salad is strategic, meant to manipulate and confuse.
But in the case of the harmonious water bottle, I don’t think it’s as nefarious as all that.
Let’s assume those sellers truly believe in their product, and honestly feel like they’re making true statements. We can also (probably) assume that a harmonious water bottle isn't going to harm anyone, even if it is a scam.
What makes it intentional is that they know their claims will not stand up to scrutiny, yet they make them anyway, and any discomfort caused by your questions can be waved away by making you the problem.
Either way—malice aforethought or willful ignorance—both are unethical and dishonest uses of words.
In Part II, we’re going to look at the unintentional word salad that happens when you have a hard time articulating the power, value, and “so what?” of the work that you do.
Let’s call it “benevolent word salad.” LOL.
Anyway, I’m going to show you some real examples from real websites, and I’m going to fix them right before your eyes.
If you want to volunteer as tribute, hit up my contact page and send me:
A paragraph you want me to help clarify and make more powerful and less word-salad-y
The link to the whole page so I can have some context
Any additional background or context you want me to know
Whether you want to be named and linked in the Coffee Break, or prefer to stay anonymous