get involved! get stuffed

There was a brief discussion in the comments to the last-but-one post about further phrases that caused annoyance; my example was "get involved" which I claimed was ubiquitous at the moment. I stand by that claim, and I further claim that this is fairly recent, though I have no empirical evidence of that. These fads come and go - remember how everyone was "passionate" about a whole range of arcane and esoteric stuff a couple of years back?

So anyway, let's get involved. Here's Gerard Butler, recently promoted to Hollywood's second-favourite Scotsman on the retirement of Sean Connery, torpedoing his rugged image a bit by advertising L'Oreal Men Expert Hydra-Energetic Anti-Fatigue Moisturiser. And four seconds in, POW, there it is.

It's not just unnaturally moist bearded Scotsmen, though, everyone's at it. Take a look at these:

Those are from, respectively, the BBC's live tennis coverage, the Fairtrade Foundation, the Liberal Democrats, the NSPCC, the Red Cross, Mencap, Sustrans, Water Aid and the UK Parliament. I could just have easily chosen Macmillan, the Conservative Party, Surrey County Council, the RSPCA, Age UK, Movember, the Girl Guides or Sky Sports.

Once again I find it hard to articulate why this rubs me up the wrong way, but it does. I think it's because I'm not really a "joiner", and the phrase has a slightly cajoling tone of COME ON, let's all just ROLL OUR SLEEVES UP and MUCK IN and we can RUDDY WELL SORT THE WHOLE THING OUT once and for all, plus it'll be FUN, right? I suppose you'd rather just read a book or something, would you? You MISERABLE OLD SHIT. Well, yeah, you got me. Now perhaps you'd like to FUCK RIGHT OFF. Thanks.