Yesterday, John Hodgman, in all his @hodgman-liness, cunningly broke apart the word meh, practically pantsing it in front of the whole school. Waxy.org has his multi-tweet sermon up for you in not-reverse order. Go there if you want the links to work — I reproduce it here just to show off my coffee ring in there. (Update: And now BoingBoing’s got it too: “John Hodgman explains whats wrong with ‘meh’”)

He calls meh “a rejection of joy” and that’s the killing blow, to my mind. Too much joy gets rejected. I like joy. I like to celebrate things. Let’s.

I’m guilty of using meh, for sure, because this language is the only language I have. We may want to virginize her, but she’s a universal whore in the meantime. So with meh in reach, I’m going to grab it now and again. But with visibility being the treasure of the Internet — where dropping a name can be like dropping coins in its guitar case — every post or comment spent on a meh is time that could be spent promoting a friend’s work or offering actual criticism somewhere else. Meh is so often the whiff of a passionless bore.

But Hodgman put it better in a couple of tweets that didn’t get caught up in the Waxy or BoingBoing posts:

Honestly, the idea that there is a smart, passionate person out there who can’t be bothered is far scarier [...] …than knowing the actual Internet handle of one malcontent jerk who took the time to write “meh.”

Anti-meh to that, @hodgman.