You’re probably familiar with this more-than-a-pet-peeve of ours by now, but let’s review for the less enlightened just joining us here at The Zombie Rights Campaign: ‘Zombie’ is not a synonym for ‘bad’, ‘wrong’, or ‘thing I just don’t like’.

Zombies are a class of people (or, in some cases, other Unliving things) that have become substantially altered from conventional biological function in some way, a state most commonly called ‘Undeath’, although some subgroupings may not be technically ‘Undead’ but still most commonly identify or self-identify as ‘Zombie’.

Like many sociological terms it’s complicated, ok?

But the broad misuse of the term continues, on and on across the web and the media in general, used by lazy journalists looking for an easy metaphor and a commonly (and unfortunately!) reviled group to smear by comparison with the latest story about something they do not personally approve of.

Case in point, a new abuse from the world of financial reporting:

Goodbye, Borders (OTC: BGPIQ). You’ve closed your final chapter and it’s time to move on. There’s no cliffhanger ending that could raise hopes of a resurrection.

…

And yet, checking up on the stock ten minutes after this morning’s opening bell, shares were down 50% on more than double the average trading volume for a full day. Borders shares keep trading on the Pink Sheets like zombies looking for fresh brains. Don’t let them get yours.

Zombie protection plan
The fact is, those shares aren’t worth the paper they’re printed on. If all goes well, Borders expects — but can’t exactly guarantee — that vendors will get paid for “all expenses incurred during the bankruptcy cases.” Never mind paying off the $345 million in accounts payable and $281 million of “other non-current liabilities” (mostly leases) that Borders had outstanding as of its last SEC report. Much of that debt has been written off as part of the bankruptcy plan, and many lenders and vendors are left holding a large bag.

Ah, see, ‘Zombie’ shares of a defunct company. Gotcha. Because something that was never alive, or remotely alive, in any fashion, can somehow become Undead.

By this logic, a used sheet of notebook paper is ‘Zombie paper’ while it sits in the recycling bin, and once recycled it’s what, Jesus paper? Born-again paper?

You can see the absurdity of this little game the ‘journalists’ and ‘bloggers’ play, but they cannot; good for you. Bad for them. Their lack of empathy, not to mention logic, has been noted.

For shame, Anders Bylund and for shame The Motley Fool for printing this Anti-Zombie dreck.

Tags: Don't Use the Zed Word, Journamalism, Mainstream Media

This entry was posted by John Sears on Sunday, July 24th, 2011 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Zombie Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.