Alright, I Won’t Be Using ‘Iconic’ Anymore (Until It’s Life Or Death)

All this while when the world has been busy debating the appropriateness of rizz and brat defining the zeitgeist (not to mention the indescribable skibidi-ness of skibidi), I have been engaged in an entirely different difficult struggle of my own.

The struggle has to do with our desperate collective dependence on the word iconic.

I see it everywhere, used by fast food joints to describe absolutely mediocre burgers, slapped on obligatorily in book blurbs and bunged along in lazy meme captions. Iconic is when you cannot think of an alternative for celebrated, noted, remarkable, rare, visionary, trailblazing, characteristic, extraordinary, evergreen or legendary (it’s a different matter that most of those words have gotten far along in their own march to expiry). Iconic is resorted to when you want an adjective vague enough to stretch and cover anything it is that you’re describing. It’s the truffle oil, if you will, of the writerly lexicon.

No, this isn’t to rail against its co-opting by the newer generations (in fact—congratulations, you give eat a new meaning when you say someone left no crumbs; you redeem the discourteous slap by making it mean something that is awesome). The good thing with terms like GOAT and OG is their abbreviated harmlessness makes no pretence of gravity or seriousness. They float frivolously like teenage elves in the meaningless exosphere of semantics. These fruits hang proudly low.

Don’t get me wrong—it’s not a rant against culture. It’s a rant against the insincere generosity of iconic to lend itself to rapid flimsification and appropriation as witnessed on the internet. It’s not the bastardisation of the term that I take issue with, but the way its enduring gravitas (an ‘icon’ is something or someone the value of which is universally recognised and time-tested) has become nauseatingly ever-present. How can iconic be everywhere? How can the world be brimming with objects and persons of such widespread cultural significance? Take a step and somebody hurls a spray of iconic spittle in your face. It’s a soulless deal that we have struck because the payoff is the extreme loss of value that this word, which was once a thing of beauty, has suffered.

Social media (our favourite whipping monkey for the right reasons) has us looking for significance and symbols all the time. Vacuum tumblers are iconic. Dance routines trending on Reels are iconic. Jorts are iconic. Awards night slaps are iconic. Instagram Story clapbacks are iconic. Perfectly skippable restaurant menu regulars are iconic. Random rap bars are iconic. TV teen drama monologues are iconic.

We’re lazy for it, too. We reach for the bottomless pail of iconics stashed away in the kitchens of conversation at the drop of a hat. Nowhere is this tiring glut of sameness more prevalent than in what we write these days. Like unscrupulous junkies desperate for validity for our words, we obsessively steal illustrious credence from the humble hyperbole. Just like we did with our fossil fuels and groundwater, we’ve wrung out whatever juice there was to the good old dramatic effect and we’re still digging. Why am I not surprised then that all sense of flavour has been lost from the term?

Of course, there’s a counter to this lurking somewhere: that language is ever-changing, always in flux (barf). That calling for restriction on the use of iconic is classist and exclusivist. But I’m not at all saying that we discontinue admissions to a coterie of figures, moments and objects from the past. I’m not a nostalgia wanker. All I’m saying is, iconic is past its expiry date. As a word dealer, I’m calling it an outdated commodity. It’s a dead giveaway of absence of merit. You liked something but you can’t pinpoint why—so you called it iconic. Sorry if I’m not sold.

I flinch at every mention of iconic. Such is the scourge of its rampancy that I squirm from its sight even when it has been used in the right places. Almost right places, I mean. For instance, when you call a pair of Birkenstocks their "most iconic ever", my first response is to wither away. Nooo, don’t use that. But if a colourway or range of a brand’s mules has come to represent a generation’s consumerist leanings, isn’t it the correct term to use? If a fountain pen has had the fortune of being brandished by noble and ignoble alike, it shall surely reserve the right to be iconic. It is an icon.

In my own vocation as a user of words, I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve settled for iconic. I’m guilty of that. Because that’s exactly the kind of leeway you get with it. What to do about it? I don’t know. Maybe use legendary and be made fun of. Write popular and be looked down upon. Visionary could bode well for me, I suppose. In any case, nothing a clunky old generation-defining can’t take care of. It’ll be a struggle for precision and originality. Bring it on, but I am going easy on iconic.