Sometimes when we push a piece of wiring to its absolute limits we learn that fluff can occasionally increase salience, honestly, and memorability. For instance, take the phrase “offline person in an online world.” On a first read it’s easy enough to understand, but after sitting with it for a while, the phrase feels bit pretentious. Like you’re a “pick-me” pointing out something special about who you are as opposed to who we are.
Adding a bit of fluff changes how the phrase comes off though. If we instead say “carbon based life form in a silicon based economy.” We strip away the pretentiousness for a brass tax take on humanity and a skeptic’s view on the culture they inhabit. But even though this version is less pretentious, it somehow this feels less encompassing. We’ve limited human life to sheer biology, and have limited the scope of our lived experience to the “economy” whatever the hell that is.
But, if we take the phrase one step further and say “spirit filled vessel in a soulless empty wasteland.” I think we arrive at the place we intended to land. We’ve maintained the lack of pretentiousness, bestowed upon human life the honor and distinction it deserves, and have enlarged the domain in which we occupy.
Even though the latest version is fluffier than the first, that doesn’t mean it’s wrong. In fact, in this case, the lengthier version feels more right that its forebears.
So while all three options roughly communicate something to the effect of “a lone traveler in a foreign miserable land,” one version clearly does the job better than the rest. And while I’m usually a prominent supporter of eliminating as much fluff as possible, sometime the limit for “as possible” is a higher word count than I would have initially assumed.