Hi, it’s Nick Moore, your guide to the world of metaphors. This week, we're looking at metaphors from a technology writer, a business writer, and a Supreme Court Justice.
1. We’re all like Reddit Sleuths
There are no quick fixes to this. No amount of shady scientific papers or tweet threads will change any of this. It feels like we are all the Reddit sleuths trying to find the Boston Marathon bombers, and our leadership oddly enough, seems to be following us, and not, whatever their own information apparatus tells them.
- Ranjan Roy, COVID-19 and Managing Risk
Ranjan Roy, one of the writers behind the newsletter Margins, describes the sense of overwhelming paranoia the COVID-19 pandemic has spread.
This metaphor references a case where would-be Internet detectives, gathering on Reddit, tried to figure out who the Boston Marathon bomber was. Infamously, they targeted the wrong person and focused a beam of mob hatred on them.
This metaphor is effective because it twists our preconceptions. Paranoia typically retains an innocence and the paranoid a victimhood, but this metaphor turns it. Instead, Roy shows that this paranoia is as likely to cause harm as good. Roy articulates the dangerous edge of a feeling many feel but haven’t articulated.
You can transplant this metaphor into similar contexts, where anxiety and paranoia rule. If this instance feels too specific or you feel your audience might not understand the reference, you can abstract it. To “feel like an Internet sleuth” or “to feel like an amateur detective” or “to feel like an Internet sleuth, obsessively scrolling through feeds from other, paranoid sleuths” also works.
2. Ego is like a cat
And as much as your ego hates the idea that you’re a failure (or lying to yourself about what you want)… it loves to be told that you’re flawless and awesome. Ego basks in attention the way a cat luxuriates in a patch of sunshine.
- Amy Hoy, The Harsh Truth about “Fear”
In this essay, SaaS business owner and business writer Amy Hoy writes about fear: the fear to start, the fear to create, the fear to do.
In this metaphor, she hones in on ego. Ego, here, is a cat. Ego stretches its body out, paws extended, and bathes in sunshine. This comparison is powerful because it turns something abstract into something material. But not only is the compared target material—it’s downright domestic.
Nothing could be less abstract than a cuddly kitten. By comparing the ego to the cat, Hoy leverages the force of moving from abstract to material.
As readers, we rush from ego to cat and nearly get whiplash along the way. But in the process, we see our egos in, if you’ll pardon me, a new light. Once you vault from ego being this big formless thing to a cuddly, yet stubbornly lazy cat, you can’t really come back. The metaphor leaves you with a new perspective.
This is the power of making abstract things visual via metaphor. Note too that if Hoy had simply said “Ego is like a lazy cat,” the imagery would have been interesting but inert.
It’s not the metaphor itself that carries the energy but the verb: luxuriate. Packed into this one word is all the imagery of the paws, legs, fur, laziness, slothfulness, relaxation. It’s that motion that makes the metaphor come alive and stay in your head. Be mindful of your verbs.
3. Reaching your goals is like sailing
To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it,––but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
- Oliver Wendell Holmes, “The Autocrat of the Breakfast-table”
Sailing is another common metaphor and you can understand why. Even if you've never been on the seas like that (I haven't), you can easily imagine the emotional thrill and the physical joy of wind and salt against your face.
Here, Oliver Wendel Holmes—early 1900s Supreme Court Justice—uses sailing to describe living with a sense of purpose. To sail is to steadfastly pursue a particular goal.
The complementary metaphor here is "the wind," which can stand in for any opposing force. You can easily adapt this metaphor to any situation where there are forces that work with you or against you, especially if that directionality isn't up to you.
Important to note here too that metaphors often work best in conjunction with opposites. Sailing is a weak metaphor on its own but with the wind as opposition, it becomes more vivid, more memorable, and for our purposes, a better option for remixing.
Expert writers throughout history and genre use metaphors to explain their ideas. Metaphor Map gathers the best of them and explains how you can adapt them to your own writing.
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