Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 118 total)
  • Irritating journalistic terms in cycling magazines.
  • flossie
    Free Member

    Is it just me….. (You know what to expect when a post starts with ‘Is it just me!)

    When did push bikes suddenly get ‘cockpits’ and am I the only one irritated by this crap?!

    Another one is ‘Carbon irons out the trail buzz’. Sorry but the 2mm of flex in my seat post doesn’t iron out the trail buzz, the squishy 2.25 Maxxis crossmarks do.

    Are there any other industry terms which when used,make you turn the page when half way through a review? It seems the much over used ‘vertical compliance – lateral stiffness’ has died a death once people started taking the mick out of it.

    Floss

    orena45
    Full Member

    ‘Murdered out’ 🙄

    CaptainFlashheart
    Free Member

    Laterally stiff, vertically compliant.

    Hideous term!

    See also;
    Swapped out
    Colorway (sic)
    Decals

    unklehomered
    Free Member

    tbh, pretty much all of it.

    unklehomered
    Free Member

    Laterally stiff, vertically compliant.

    much like myself. 🙂

    beaker
    Full Member

    I read the Trail Bike of the year thread and the What MTB mag review of the Zesty and was somewhat confused by the term ‘Handlestick’. Its stuff like this that made me stop my sub with them….

    slugwash
    Free Member

    Weapon of choice” if it’s only got one rear cog and you’re riding it in an urban environment 🙄

    Northwind
    Full Member

    My 2 favourites recently were in MBUK, I think.

    “The 710mm bar is too narrow for trail use”
    and
    “The 2.3 Eskar comes up massive”- actually it comes up at almost exactly 2.3 inches. The other tyres in the test were undersized but they criticised the one that got it right for being too big.

    beaker – Member

    I read the Trail Bike of the year thread and the What MTB mag review of the Zesty and was somewhat confused by the term Handlestick’

    I think that was supposed to be funny. They seem to have a few people trying to write jokes without really quite understanding what they are, the ride guides are full of them.

    mikewsmith
    Free Member

    29

    teamhurtmore
    Free Member

    £2k = “astonishing VFM”

    £3k – ripe for upgrading

    charliedontsurf
    Full Member

    I dunno…

    It’s a tough job conveying the subtleties of bike design with words, whilst selling ad space and magazines

    Ride a jones bike and tell me vert compliance lateral rigidity are not real.

    Frank Zappa whilst not a MBUK subscriber nailed it on the head….

    “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”

    What would you rather see: Chipps writing, or Chipps dancing?

    plyphon
    Free Member

    With a clear connection to the trails hardpack loose float through with ability to squeeze every bit of forward speed eliminating slap and clatter. However excess dive and twang under braking come into effect when flicking it from feature to feature or blasted rocky sections. Pairing that against ultra-supple yet accurate and sustained flow when straight-lining wet farm help drivetrain insurance. I prefer some flinch and flex up front, rather than hunkering down and hammering or ploughing. This means your brain will be as tired as your legs trying to hold the wheels straight up loose (???)

    The imminent arrival of the 650b-wheeled 29er version means the neutral but agile signature will gain a naturally more stable, surefooted stance for those who prefer less needy handling on this 26er.

    I literally just pulled that all from 2 Bikeradar reviews. I should get back to work.

    brakes
    Free Member

    It’s a tough job conveying the subtleties of bike design with words, whilst selling ad space

    I don’t like it when this gets trotted out as an excuse for poor content in magazines. you don’t buy a magazine to be concerned about whether the publisher is turning a profit.

    MSP
    Full Member

    What would you rather see: Chipps writing, or Chipps dancing?

    DANCE! DANCE! DANCE! DANCE! DANCE! DANCE!…….

    crazy-legs
    Full Member

    My bike corners like its on rails with its buttery smooth suspension.

    Well according to the magazine review it does, I’ve only ever managed to corner it like I was riding round a 50p piece… 😉

    Dave
    Free Member

    “What would you rather see: Chipps writing, or Chipps dancing?”

    The ideal compromise is Chipps writing and Mark break dancing 😉

    LoCo
    Free Member

    I would like to see Chipps, doing an enterpretational freeform dance of how he feels the new Bronson performs in comparison to the Nomad

    Northwind
    Full Member

    brakes – Member

    you don’t buy a magazine to be concerned about whether the publisher is turning a profit.

    Well true. But I buy magazines I like and if they don’t turn a profit they’ll go out of business.

    z1ppy
    Full Member

    flossie, please write us a review of your bike, and let us all see how easy it is. You know, just to prove they’re all inept and can’t do the job their paid for…

    breatheeasy
    Free Member

    “cut and paste” used to annoy me.

    singletrackbiker
    Free Member

    I stopped reading MBUK some years back when they went downhill orientated. They reviewed what was clearly an xc stem (with xc in the name) & concluded it was too light for serious DH use. Really??
    Stopped reading MBR as every article was the same, you knew the layout & the conclusions before starting reading. Oh, and the fact that every other page was a Specialized advert & every test had a Specialized as the winner…even if the bike in question didn’t actually suit the “category” they were testing.
    I appreciate a tester needs to convey how a bike feels, but some of the terminology is cringe-worthy.

    LoCo
    Free Member

    This is good though.

    http://www.eyesdownfilms.tv/mbr-hardtail-of-the-year-test-2013/

    amusing crash too 😉

    BadlyWiredDog
    Full Member

    That’s writing for you. There are lots of words out there, but putting them together in a vaguely original order that conveys exactly what you’re trying to say with some sort of economy and resonance isn’t always that easy.

    Bt then people also tend to get what the cliches mean, which saves time. I almost convulsed like an imploding paper bag the other week listening to someone telling his mates how a bike rode at a demo day. It was like listening to a magazine test made flesh: ‘weapon’, ‘point and shoot’, ‘buttery smooth’, ‘deceptively fast’, ‘doesn’t ride like a 30lb bike’ all made an appearance.

    It was brilliant. And it would never have happened without bike test cliches…

    PimpmasterJazz
    Free Member

    This is good though.

    http://www.eyesdownfilms.tv/mbr-hardtail-of-the-year-test-2013/

    amusing crash too

    Good fun vid. Like that. 🙂

    StefMcDef
    Free Member

    “Body English”. Which I take to mean something along the lines of weighting the bike this way and that as you ride.

    That for me is the absolute zenith of up-its-own-arse cycling mag terminology. It will never be surpassed.

    You wonder how the likes of Hans Rey and Cedric Gracia manage, when they have Body English as a second language. Maybe Body French or Body German are better.

    Dave
    Free Member

    Here’s Mark interpreting a bike from Interbike Dirt Demo 2011

    http://www.facebook.com/singletrackmag

    Enjoy…

    steve_b77
    Free Member

    Smashing a trail, now that really bugs me

    slugwash
    Free Member

    In defence of the bike journalists it’s probably the sub-editors and editors who add the formulaic words to the original copy for inclusion in the published article 😉

    Dave
    Free Member

    and here’s Chipps as requested

    [video]http://vimeo.com/6470650[/video]

    The only bike reviews I read nowadays are in the CTC rag. They seem relativly sensible, if occasonally over fixated on mud guard clearance and rack mounts.

    nedrapier
    Full Member

    If you clicked on this thread, which I can only assume you have, you should read this:

    http://bikesnobnyc.blogspot.ch/2007/08/bsnyc-2008-dream-bike-shootout.html

    pickle
    Free Member

    i don’t find the phrases used half as irritating as lazy people posting threads entitled “reccomend me **********” do some research and stop being so lazy!

    message to one’s self, get out of bed the other side tomorrow 😀

    LoCo
    Free Member

    I need context for Chipp’s dance 👿

    Dave
    Free Member

    He’s interpreting the bike industry’s dilemma in choosing a future wheel size

    mindmap3
    Free Member

    Body English is particularly bad…the person who came up with that needs beating!

    The others are pretty silly, do people really refer to their bikes as a weapon? Or tell people how they railed a certain berm, smashed the trail, whilst steam rollering a rock garden, shredding the gnarr whilst noticing no flex / damping spiking?

    It definitely seems to have got worse. Some of the stuff that Steve Jones wires about suspension in Dirt makes no sense whatsoever.

    LoCo
    Free Member

    He’s interpreting the bike industries dilemma in choosing a future wheel size

    I had an incleing that may have been it, 9/10 😉

    GaryLake
    Free Member

    Laterally stiff, vertically compliant.

    You’ve got a few hundred words at most to work with. And you expect the reviewer to waste them by saying “the frame was very stiff in a side to side manner, especially while pedalling hard, yet it was remarkably comfortable in a vertical manner when riding over bumps”.

    Jargon is a byproduct of limited word counts and having to write the same old shit over and over again 😉

    Andy-R
    Full Member

    StefMcDef – Member
    “Body English”. Which I take to mean something along the lines of weighting the bike this way and that as you ride.

    That for me is the absolute zenith of up-its-own-arse cycling mag terminology. It will never be surpassed.

    The term “Body English” pre-dates mountain biking magazines though – it was used in the motorcycle trials context at least forty years ago.

    Trimix
    Free Member

    All these crappy terms are a by product of limited intelligence, poor use of English, lazy writing.

    If Ive paid to read something I want it perfect, not dumbed down.

    If you write for a living, then you need to do it to a higher standard than your customers.

    bristolbiker
    Free Member

    Laterally stiff, vertically compliant.

    You’ve got a few hundred words at most to work with. And you expect the reviewer to waste them by saying “the frame was very stiff in a side to side manner, especially while pedalling hard, yet it was remarkably comfortable in a vertical manner when riding over bumps”.

    I think the point is, the term itself is meaningless bobbins – as a structure, a frame has both an amount of lateral stiffness and an amount of vertical compliance (you could equally talk about lateral compliance and vertical stiffness and that still tells me exactly the same amount of sweet-FA about the performance of the frame) – if you’re not going to qualify that statement against something else (either hard numbers or qualitatively compare it against a similar product) then it’s lazy writing (probably copied and pasted verbatum from the manufacturers hyperbole driven press release), a waste of paper and ink and – most importantly – a waste of my time.

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