Real Men Don’t “Reach Out”

It’s getting harder and harder to maintain my hermit status.

Everyone is Reaching Out to me. And it’s not just people. Even organizations that should know better think that reaching out to me makes them my new best friend. Banks, airlines, websites. Really?

And it’s not just me. Everywhere I turn it seems people and organizations are reaching out to each other. We’re turning into a nation of huggers.

Last week Symantec announced that they had “reached out” to Facebook while investigating user privacy issues. Facebook reached back, and in so many words told them to shove it. Hurray!

Now THIS is a Reach Out.
And, an exception to the rule “Big Hands, Big ….”

The Urban Dictionary gets it right,

TO REACH OUT:  This has become the new cliché for yuppie types or any pseudo-intellectual types or just idiots that think it sounds special. It is simply just another way of saying: contact, call, speak to, notify, etc. It really sounds faggy and flags the speaker as being self conscious about how they sound to their peers. You also have to wonder who they think they’re impressing when they speak like they have an Emily Post book on etiquette shoved up their ass.

By the way, the NSA is also reaching out, but without the hug. I wonder if it has occurred to them that 99.99999% of the internet traffic they are collecting is spam? I’m not sure the 5 zettabyte’s of storage they are building in Utah will be enough.

In my own case, just discovering that you spell zettabyte with two t’s made my day.