How Crypto Jargon Dupes You Into Its Casino

Ifthere’s one thing you’ll quickly notice when engaging with the crypto true believers, their language is dripping in a thick impenetrable slurry of invented words and cliches that they effortlessly code-switch while confused onlookers gaze on in confusion and disbelief. Unlike your usual fandom or technical discipline, the sheer depth of this meme-laden newspeak is somewhat shocking and hints at deeper sociological forces at work. After all it’s not surprising, the contortion of language is―as every scholar from Orwell to Chomsky has opined―a tool for the calcification of power and the maintenance of the thinkable. The American linguist Amanda Montell wrote in her recent book ‘Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism’: <blockquote> “Creating special language to influence people’s behavior and beliefs is so effective in part simply because speech is the first thing we’re willing to change about ourselves . . . and also the last thing we let go.” </blockquote> And that speaks to the more profound truth that, unlike technical jargon, which is designed to succinctly convey <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbwGr9GOtO0" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">incompressible ideas</a>, the purpose of Cultish (a portmanteau of cult and English) is not to convey truth but quite the opposite―to signal affinity to an ingroup and their collective untruths. <a href="https://medium.com/@Stephen.Diehl/cryptos-orwellian-newspeak-7814f0a654b7">Click Here</a>