Buzzword Bingo Was Real

I flew to San Francisco this week for a product leadership summit, and without meaning to, I walked straight into a live demonstration of everything Mathias and I just spent an hour talking about on the podcast.

We'd released the lingo episode days before I left, business jargon, ambiguity, the odd overlap between corporate language and cult language. I thought it was a fun, slightly indulgent topic. It was a chapter that didn't make the book. Then I stood in line for an event in SF and watched it happen in real time.

The Bingo Card Filled Itself In

In under ten minutes in line, I heard "AI pilled" three separate times. Then "tokenmaxxing." Then "context engineering," "agentic," "vibe coding," "compute-pilled," and someone's "harness" mentioned like it was a load-bearing personality trait.

I wasn't trying to collect these. I didn't need to. They just kept arriving, one after another, the way synergies and let's double click on that kept arriving in every meeting Mathias described on the pod. Different vocabulary, same shape entirely.

Show Me Your Jargon, I'll Show You Your Clan

Here's the part that actually stuck with me. While I was in that line, I overheard a guy telling his friend he wasn't sure the SaaS company he worked for was going to survive the next few years. Genuine, specific worry. And then, almost as a reflex, he added: but he was “AI pilled.”

That's the whole episode in one sentence. Underneath the uncertainty, the language showed up to do its job: cover the insecurity, signal belonging, prove he was still inside the group even while quietly wondering if the ground was moving under him. We talked about this exact mechanism on the podcast, how insider vocabulary creates belonging for the people using it and exclusion for everyone else, and how it's often standing in for a decision, or a certainty, that doesn't actually exist yet.

Nobody in that line was lying, exactly. But nobody was saying what they actually meant either.

An Agenda Built From the Inside

The agenda itself told the same story. Same companies, same names, session after session. I found myself wishing for more diversity, not the kind people usually mean, but diversity of ideas. A room that already agrees on its vocabulary tends to agree on its guest list too. That's not a conspiracy, it's just what insular groups do: they invite the people who already speak the language, and the language gets reinforced instead of questioned.

The clients and friends I met up with while I was there, the actual conversations, had none of this. They were specific. They used real words for real things. It was the more corporate, on-the-record parts of the trip where the language dissolved into fog.

The Audit We Talked About

On the podcast, we landed on something concrete: a terminology audit. Once a year, sit down with your team and actually look at the words you've all been using. What's earned its place. What's gone hollow. What only makes sense to the five people who coined it three years ago.

I'd extend that same audit to an entire industry gathering, honestly. If a room full of smart people can spend an entire day together and use six or seven words that nobody stops to define, that's not a vocabulary problem. That's the thing we described in the episode wearing a different costume, language that lets everyone nod along without anyone having to say what they actually believe.

So here's the small, doable version of the invitation: pick one word you used this week that you'd struggle to define in one plain sentence to someone outside your industry. Agentic. Alignment. AI pilled. Doesn't matter which. Just see if you can say what you actually mean without it.

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If you want the full hour on business lingo, cults, and why "let's double click on that" makes Mathias's blood boil, check out S1E7 of the podcast. I promise it's more useful, and funnier, than anything I heard in that line in San Francisco.

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