An interview with The Red Worm

Buzz word busters, The Buzz Saw's homemade e-mail filter can smell a hokey, vacuous word before it saturates your IN box. The Red Worm is the founder of The Buzz Saw.

by Susan MacTavish Best

Jamie Zawinski was one of the first faces around Netscape. Way back then. Then he was one of the initiators of the Mozilla project. And now he's in the process of buying the DNA Lounge.

An interview with David Buckmaster, mayor of Silicon Valley's San Carlos

1). How often do you go red from using a buzz word?

Very rarely. When I do use a buzzword, I try to make sure the sardonic quotation marks are audible. When I was at Forbes, there were a few agonizing instances in which buzzwords were edited into my stories. See http://buzzkiller.net/hypocrite.html

2). How often do you make a CEO go red from using a buzz word during an interview?

I usually let "C-level" (note the sardonic quotation marks) executives off the hook, but I've noticed that PR people have been arming their execs against the Buzz Saw by printing our site's pages out for them before interviews.

3). How often do you make PR people go red from using a buzz word?

Plenty. Send me an email with the word "rob*st" or "turnk*y" in it, and feel the sensation. (I partially redacted those words so I don't set off my own nasty little filter.)

4). What's the most buzz-bloated content site you've come across?

If you count marketplace analysis firms like Forrester, Jupiter, et al., it's hard to choose the worst of that bunch. I think those guys are the source of a good percentage of the buzzwords bouncing around. If those don't really qualify as content sites, then I'd have to say the Web sites of plenty of the trade mags. But that's usually a case of pretty technical buzzwords, rather than the more general and fatuous stuff you'll see hung up on my site. Herring.com is so inside that it walks a pretty fine line from time to time.

4). Buzz words of 1997 were what?

I went and checked press releases from 1997. People were putting out a lot of releases announcing their new home pages on the Web. sol*tions rob*st turnk*y scal*ble inter*ctive online

5). Buzz words of 2000 are what?

The kind of unoriginal thinking that leads to buzzword formation and abuse also leads to buzzword perpetuation. Thus, even though almost nothing about the tech industry is the same as it was in 1997, many of the big buzzwords remain: sol*tions rob*st b2b verticals monetize offline

6). Do you know of any buzz words that were floating around during the Gold Rush? The original one, that is. If not, give a guess of a couple.

sluice-enabled, bear-proof

7). Should all marketing and PR professionals in the Bay Area enroll in the remedial english class at City College? Or should they let their ideaphoria fly fly fly like a bird when writing press releases?

They should warn their clients and employers about the potential hazards of slinging vapid buzzwords. We've gotten a lot of email from very literate flacks who were English majors and write buzzword-laden releases only at the insistence of their clients.

8). Apparently, some publication in downtown San Francisco has suggested that Merchant Street (located in the heart of the Gold Rush district, more past, less present), that the street be renamed e-Merch@nt Street. Any word on this?

One word: Abomination.

9). I've registered BuzzOffPR.com and MissMalaprop.com. I'm beginning to wonder if they have any use. Do you have any suggestions of what I can do with them?

You could rent BuzzOffPR.com email addresses to people who have been nicked by the Buzz Saw filter. MissMalaprop.com could be a highly scalar interruptive Web-encumbered solvent.

10). I heard that the hyphen key on the computer keyboard was going to be swapped with the single quotation mark for ease-of-use. All buzz, all true, or just a load of crap?

The ultimate PR hack attack would be a trojan horse program that turned the hyphen key into a delete key. PR Newswire, Business Wire and M2 Presswire would be out of commission. With a shortage of mushy buzzwords to grease its progress, the Web industry would screech to a halt.

11). What's your preferred tense to live by? Nominative, accusative, > genitive, dative or ablative?

tense: present indicative

case: dative

12). Did you have any banned words in your household growing up?

No, but there was a family-wide prohibition on speaking with a Philadelphia accent.

13). Do you have a favorite brand of scotch that you like to drink?

I'm partial to gin.

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