Word: phenomenon
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...know of nothing that has caused greater pain to the Church than has this phenomenon of abuse...
Heading to a friend's house was a widespread phenomenon. Regardless of location, however, food played a prominent--even competitive--part in most people's vacations...
...Zachary L. Shrier's '99 15-page papers, the professor wrote "Nice paper--but so what?" Shrier comments, "So what? I don't know! You're the professor; you tell me so what!" Davis has also experienced the "So What" Phenomenon. His Expos preceptor would write the inexplicable words "the so what factor" next to various random lines in the paper. "It's easy to interpret that as 'I don't care about your paper' rather than as 'Why is this important to your paper?'" Davis notes. "On one of my papers, she wrote, 'Good title' next to my title...
Maybe it is just that the public grows bored after a while of seeing the same names in the headlines and reacts accordingly. Maybe it is as simple a phenomenon as jealousy of the success of others. Maybe the brief half-life of celebrity is due to our much-maligned disposable MTV culture, which tailors advertisements and events to viewers who are assumed to have the attention span of an electron...
Whatever the reasons for it, this public backlash against the successful is an intriguing and powerful phenomenon which, regardless of its occasional unfairness, at least makes good copy. We may need villains to root against as much as we need heroes to cheer for, and who better to wear the black hat than those people or organizations that the public made famous and successful in the first place...