insignificant others

So the agenda for this morning is studying pretty labels for communication concepts.

I was just covering Social Penetration Theory, which holds that there are two elements to our interaction with the rest of society: breadth and depth. Breadth refers to the number of topics you may discuss with another person, depth with your degree of intimacy and emotional vulnerability in discussing those topics. This seems kind of "duh," but really not much in the human comm department hasn't . . .

Anyway, so I was reading about depth and found some statement about we have greater depth in communication with "a significant other." (There is lots about significant others at school -- so much that they are just "S.O."s. [It took me a while to figure out what an SO was; actually, now that I think about it, I don't think anyone's explicitly explained what is meant by SO; I think that's what they mean . . .])

And it dawned on me what a STUPID term that is.

It's a term we have to use now because romantic "love" has nothing to do with commitment (probably not much to do with real love either), because family has no absolute definition, because friends are notches you mark off on Facebook, and because linguistic gender differentiation is taboo. My significant other is my significant-to-me-other, right at this particular moment.

I don't really get mad a lot, but taking the meaning out of things makes me really mad.

And I'm not sure where this is going . . .