Banned Marketing Lingo

Hey gang, Ross here. I've been doing what I do, playing instruments, visiting guitar shops, talking to other players and watching videos on YouTube from sources that I have come to value over time.

Perhaps I am out of line, but I have evolved a highly sensitive and accurate BS detector and lately I find myself having to consistently replacing a bent needle on my old style BS meter.

You've felt it too, you hear a pitch that is going along and then a couple of trigger words, what are apparently now referred to as "dog whistles", make your skin crawl and your teeth itch.

I am speaking of course of the words "iconic" and "authentic"

Hello all marketing specialists. Those words may not actually mean what you think that they mean, certainly not in the context being used and they have become dog whistles to alert us, your buyers, that whatever follows is a heapin' helpin' of fertilizer.

Not to cast rocks, but the most visible spewer of this stuff has to be Gibson talking head Mark Agnesi. Whether you care for Mr. Agnesi or not is entirely up to you, but I know that if I need to win at a game of BS Bingo really fast, I just need to run one of his videos. I have no idea whether Mr. Agnesi believes what he says, and don't really care. He's not alone, and the words "iconic" and "authentic" may as well illuminate a giant neon sign flashing "huge load of insincere dreck inbound"

There you go. Rant over.