HOWTO.ad-campaign

If you have to start a multi-million dollar ad campaign to convince people that the product you released 10 months ago doesn't suck, someone, somewhere in your organization fucked up. Either marketing, the launch team, who picked the background, whatever- but anytime you have to tell people that your product isn't as shitty as everyone seems to think it is, somewhere you've got a problem.

When I was a college instructor, I tried not to curse much in front of the class, but at some point, usually in the lab, I'd have to explain to them the concept of status when it comes to industrial equipment/ circuits.

"Basically," I would begin usually after we'd waved the smoke away, "You have three states of being- working, broken, and fucked up. Obviously, if it's working, you don't have to mess with it. Some folks will tell you there's variations of working, such as working well or barely working, but truth of the matter is, if it's working, you shouldn't mess with it until end of shift."

"We also have broken which can represent many different states, but typically what you're conveying with broken is you've got something that isn't working, but you know how to fix it and have what you need to fix the problem. It's a temporary state lasting anywhere from a few seconds to an hour, tops."

"Fucked up, however, is the third state. When you've got something that's fucked up, it's about to get interesting. Either you don't have the parts to fix it, you don't know how to fix it, it isn't repairable, or all of the above."

The point is this- often times curse words are overused and unnecessary in the English language. Sometimes however, they represent a concept or illustrate a point that actually is integral to explaining severity of a situation.

Some people make mistakes. Some people fuck up. There is a difference is all I'm saying.