Leveraging the synergy of ligatures

March 7, 2015 7:39 PM

Need a font to give your new business plan some extra oomph? Try Sans Bullshit Sans.
How it works.
posted by anemone of the state (24 comments total)

It didn't catch 'inflection point'.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 7:45 PM on March 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

I started with "We need to synergize the paradigm" and it hadn't flagged me yet, so I was skeptical. But it definitely knows what leveraging social media is worth.
posted by meinvt at 8:02 PM on March 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

I am bummed that it doesn't work for my field. Other than "solutions," "optimized," and "paradigm," it doesn't have our buzzwords in its vocabulary.
posted by Miko at 8:10 PM on March 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

I guess my browser doesn't support ligatures because it didn't censor anything in this: Synergize the market share with the social mindhive.
posted by NoMich at 8:11 PM on March 7, 2015

Fail. "Cloud" doesn't get replaced. Nothing more bullshit than that.
posted by graymouser at 8:12 PM on March 7, 2015 [9 favorites]

The "How it works" link may be the single most fascinating writeup I've come across in quite a while.
posted by slogger at 8:16 PM on March 7, 2015 [3 favorites]

There are a lot of terms it only catches one form of. "The cloud" but not "cloud", "leverage" but not "leveraging", etc.

Symbolset has a bunch of web-icon-fonts that use the ligature technique.
posted by Phssthpok at 8:22 PM on March 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

"Crowdfunding" got through. It penalized "action item" though.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:34 PM on March 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

Also, this is making me happy that legalese, while frustrating, is a different animal from buzzwords. In law, words have specific meanings, especially terms of art, and if they are used improperly, you get to slap someone around in public over it.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:41 PM on March 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

"Growing shareholder value by synergistically leveraging core competencies" gets through, so, they have some work to do on their BS detection.
posted by Pseudonymous Cognomen at 8:42 PM on March 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

It's not really that useful, but it's a great demo for a really interesting how-it-works - very clever.
posted by parki at 8:47 PM on March 7, 2015

Fail. "Cloud" doesn't get replaced. Nothing more bullshit than that.

You just need to bullshit the b.s. bullshit bullshit in my butt.
posted by straight at 9:08 PM on March 7, 2015

Dear god, it contains a step-by-step tutorial to font hacking! Definitely a case where digging a little provides amazing riches.
posted by JHarris at 9:12 PM on March 7, 2015

I pasted the full lyrics to Weird Al's "Mission Statement" song into it. Kinda underwhelmed. Only 14 bullshits, completely missing all this...

The fundamentals of change
Can you visualize a value-added experience?
That will grow the business infrastructure and
Monetize our assets
Bringing to the table
Our capitalized reputation
Proactively overseeing
Day-to-day operations
Services and deliverables
With cross-platform innovation
Networking
Soon will bring
Seamless integration
Robust and scalable, bleeding-edge and next-generation
Best of breed
We'll succeed

At least it turned the final refrain "It's a paradigm shift!" into "It's a bullfuckingshit!"
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:41 PM on March 7, 2015 [2 favorites]

"Disrupt" got through...
posted by persona au gratin at 10:07 PM on March 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

The great thing, though, is that the creator provides everything you need to know to make your own improved version!
posted by JHarris at 11:36 PM on March 7, 2015

And the comments reveal the source file used to make the font that contains the ligature definitions (scroll to the bottom for them):

https://github.com/RoelN/SansBullshitSans/blob/master/SansBullshitSans.ttx

I think you could just download this file, add your additions, then feed it into ttx. We could make our own improved version of the font, easy peasy.
posted by JHarris at 11:43 PM on March 7, 2015 [1 favorite]

If you just want Bullshit Sans, it's called Tempus Sans in polite company.
posted by louche mustachio at 12:20 AM on March 8, 2015

I loved the "how it works" part - there's more one their main page.
posted by fermezporte at 5:41 AM on March 8, 2015

It caught "synergy" but skipped "synergizing"
Still, pretty funny.

And, I'll give it a big gold star for calling-out "impact" as a bullshit term. I am so tired of impact/impacting/impacted being used instead of affect/affecting/affected/etc. I got the form letter from Anthem yesterday about the recent data breach, and the thing was utterly festooned with "impact" variants. It read like a freshman-level marketing class assignment.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:41 AM on March 8, 2015 [1 favorite]

I downloaded it. Seems like bullshit.
posted by rmmcclay at 7:15 AM on March 8, 2015

It nailed "thought leader" but missed "ninja rockstar". So, half good maybe?
posted by Existential Dread at 11:18 AM on March 8, 2015

It missed "vertical."
posted by univac at 6:18 PM on March 8, 2015

As cited in the how-it-was-done, the word list.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 10:41 PM on March 8, 2015