Mea Culpa: Curators curating curated exhibits of pretentiousness

C-words in The Independent this week that ought to be discouraged

Queens of the Stone Age performing at London's O2 Arena this week (Luke Dyson)

At the end of a review of Queens of the Stone Age at the O2 this week, we said that the band “will headline their own curated outdoor show at London’s Finsbury Park on 30 June 2018”. The word “curated” here presumably means that they will choose the other artists to perform with them. I think that meaning would be clear if we wrote about “their own show”, so we could have deleted “curated”.

The word is spreading from museums and art exhibitions like a blight. Restaurants these days serve artisanal this and curated that, all sourced from “producers who share our values”. It’s pretentious and we shouldn’t encourage it.

We also wrote this week about online retailers “offering curated search results”, which I assume means they are filtered according to information they have about people browsing their website. This is not necessarily a good thing, so we ought to avoid making it sound as if it is.

Communitism: Talking of c-words, there is always a better word than “community”. We reported this week about alleged crimes in “a remote community in northern Norway”. I thought we could have said town or village, if that is what we meant, or even municipality, which is what it was.

It turned out, however, also to refer to “the Sami community”, an ethnic group sometimes known as Lapps or Laplanders. Instead of a warm-sounding abstract word, we could have used neutral language, talking about “a remote area of northern Norway” and “the Sami people”.

Quite often, “community” is used to mean “people who have something in common”. We wrote this week of Britain First marches “shouting abuse at Muslim communities”, when “shouting abuse at Muslims” would have been more direct.

Similarly, we wrote about the film Moonlight, commenting on “its rare depiction of homosexuality within the African-American community”. I think “...among African-Americans” would be better, because it doesn’t suggest a closed, self-sufficient group.

Obviously we cannot avoid the word when it is in the name of a government department, as in Communities and Local Government, although we could shorten it to “Local Government” whenever possible. But there are times when it is just verbiage. We wrote that Microsoft’s new HQ near Seattle “features a community space for 8,000 to 12,000 people in an open-air plaza”. This sounds like architect-speak for an open space.

Condition update: Finally, a third c-word: this week we wrote about “warmer spring conditions”, “harsh weather conditions” and “wintry conditions with snow and ice and flooding in many areas”. We meant “weather”.