David Rakoff Quote

Can we pause for a moment to talk about that term, Innovention? A neologism that, in an effort to turbo-charge meaning, takes two perfectly eloquent and unassailable words and by combining them renders both suspect. It is a word developed by a committee, one that can only be spoken unironically if one is being paid to do so, like menus in chain restaurants that list Snacketizers and Appeteasers. Can’t you just taste the process-mapping? The neon-orange layer of melted reconstituted-milk-solids-derived cheese, the pink stratum of animal-protein-cultured meat? Vacuum-packed and irradiated and shipped to some franchise that itself was unpackaged from boxes sent directly from corporate, with ready-made walls of homey, weathered fake brick and battered retro license plates. Innovention can only leave a similar taste in the mouth. It makes one suspicious, wondering about the ways in which the object in question is found so wanting, so insufficiently innovative or lacking in invention to warrant this linguistic boost.