What "crisis" does and does not mean
I had a bit of an Inigo Montoya moment yesterday. Not “Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.” It was more like when Vizzini shouted “Inconceivable!” for the eighth or ninth time, and Inigo said “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
It happened when I saw this headline: “The US Rural Broadband Crisis”
For some reason, headline writers (along with politicians) love the word crisis. The problem is, they almost always use it to describe what is merely a bad or undesirable situation. Crisis is not a synonym for bad situation.
Here are a couple of good definitions of crisis:
A crucial or decisive point or situation; a turning point.
An unstable condition, as in political, social, or economic affairs, involving an impending abrupt or decisive change.
The lack of good broadband access in rural areas can be called a problem or an undesirable situation. But calling it a crisis isn’t even hyperbole, it’s just plain wrong. There is no “crucial or decisive point” involved; no “impending abrupt or decisive change” is in sight.
Crisis is a perfectly good word. Let’s use it when it’s really called for, and not to hype something that isn’t really a crisis.
Roy Jacobsen
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