X is the new Y

There’s this tired saying that’s been thrown around in conversation since roughly the early sixties. I abhor it for its presumptuous fickleness, a derivative of low brow fashion snobbery. You’ve probably seen dozens of variants of it, such as:

And so on, and so on…

I know how tempting it can be to use this snowclone phrase. It is quite easy to capture a tasty morsel of sophomoric irony in its simple mantraic form, which certainly makes it easy for the masses to quote verbatim. In fact, I bet you can think of a few catchy ones of your own right now. Go on, take a few minutes to think of some yourself. Leave them in the comments. To get you started, here’s a nice little progression I came up with that so deftly deals blows to some worship music trends that so many have strong opinions about.

• “Traditional is the new Gregorian.”
• “Contemporary is the new Traditional.”
• “Modern is the new Contemporary.”
• “Emergent is the new Modern.”
• “??? is the new Emergent.”

Sadly, the list of users of this banishable phrase is longer than the list of phrases conjured up. The abuse goes straight to the top. Even the can-do-no-wrong Radiohead used it in the form of a song title for the track “Down is the New Up” on the In Rainbows bonus disc. [small tear] But despite its use by celebrities and trendsetters, please, please, please! let’s not make a habit of employing it.

The entire basis of this awful catch phrase is this:

Something new is replacing something old, because the new thing is either better or similar to the old thing.*

*Or at least I want you to believe it is true, so you will perceive me as being cool/hip/trendy/clever/in-the-know, or so I can profit by selling you my new commodity in a different color because the old commodity is now inferior.

Lame, right?

So lame, in fact, that I’m willing to bet that “X is the new Y” is the new “A is to X as B is to Y” analogy, which means start looking for it on the SAT Exams starting in 2010.

Sample Question

Please fill in the blank.

“____________ is the new Johnny Carson.”

• A. Jimmy Kimmel
• B. Conan O’Brien
• C. Jay Leno
• D. Craig Ferguson
• E. Carson Daly
• F. None of the Above

Correct answer: F, though B is acceptable on good nights.

For more examples of “X is the new Y” check out this diagram or this WikiPedia entry. For even more words and phrases you should think about retiring, check Lake Superior State University’s 2008 List of banished words.