Blogging Ottinger (tim)

I’m tired of the phrase “the real world”.

When someone in an argument or explanation utters this magical phrase, it is supposed to confer to them authority and strip same from their victim. It is supposed to be an argument-ender. It says “my experience is objective and counts, yours is not valid.” If your world is real, and mine is not, then nothing I can say matters. In fact, my very existence is 99.99% in my past, so my entire life is invalid if my experience is not in “the real world”. In this usage, it’s simply rude and inconsiderate.

“But that doesn’t work in the real world” usually doesn’t mean that it has been tried and found lacking. It usually means the speaker doesn’t imagine it will work: It fails in their imaginary world. Usually when it has been tried and found lacking, the speaker will begin with “when we tried it we had problems.” In this usage, it is a lie wrapped up in a pompous generalization. It is rudeness and presumption.

Other times, it means “in my little corner of the world.” The problem here is that we may selfishly assume that our experience is universal. The world as we have experienced it is dubbed “the real world”, and the world as others have experienced it becomes some imaginary place. This is especially true when we are talking about people who have spent the majority of their career in a single company or the majority of their life in a single town. This use is at least honest. The speaker has spent so much time in one place that he doesn’t realize there are other places. This is a common criticism of Americans in general. Sometimes we think we are the real world, the whole thing and not just one corner of it. This usage shows self-involvement, but isn’t generally intended to be rude. But it is wrong.

I’m now trying to keep myself from uttering the phrase at all. I will struggle to say “in my experience” and “reportedly” or “so-and-so found that” or “I don’t believe” or “here at this company”. I want to be honest, and avoid presumptive self-involvement or rudeness.

Please join the crusade. Don’t let “In The Real World” stand as an argument. Ask which real world the author is discussing, the whole one, the one he’s built, or just the corner he lives in. Decide to not be intimidated by the phrase. Decide to not use it yourself.

I think that dropping this little habit won’t bring about world peace or give us any kind of silver bullet, but it might make our arguments more objective and useful and that might make this shared “real world” a little nicer place to work.