McKean's Inversion

Also, I noticed the other day that Scalzi had done a post about what he calls McKean's Inversion: i.e., the law that anyone who describes themselves as "classy" immediately, accurately and irrevocably conveys the message that they are not classy.

I thought of this on Friday because of my one coworker who is the type of person who would never describe herself as "quirky". We all went out to lunch and politely spent much of the time looking at the pictures of squirrels on her iPad that she really wanted to show us. People who say they are "quirky", I somehow magically hear "desperate to be interesting".

I actually don't think "funny" is one of those words, though. Though maybe this is because I know a lot of professional juggler/comedians. I mean, plenty of unfunny people say they're funny - most salient example right now, my two-year-old, who likes to say his most annoying bullshit is "funny" - but plenty of funny people, even people funny enough to be professionally funny, also say that they're funny, with good reason. In my experience there's neither a negative nor a positive correlation.