When American Airlines added 2" of knee space between rows of seats on its airplanes, it spent a lot of money advertising "More Room." Then it got greedy, stopped the ads, and reducing the spacing -- calling it the "density modification program."
Did you notice the spin? Negative features (closer seats) get neutral terms (modification). In the software world, bugs have become "issues." So if you read of a company using a neutral term to describe something, you can figure that something's wrong.
Of course, the way the English language develops, neutral terms eventually become negative terms just by association. So then the next neutral term gets put into play. Now that "issues" has become a negative term (my kids say, "he's got issues"), I wonder what will next be dug out of the lexiconical bucket.
Or the blame is scapegoated. For example, it's not the computer that crashes, it's the operating system, usually.
Comments