Essay:Ice Cream Words

Ice cream. Who doesn't like ice cream, am I right? So words that are like ice cream must be good in some way, right?

...Right?

So You Say You Like Ice Cream
Before I explain what an ice cream word is, let's take a little internet journey. Don't worry, we aren't going anywhere scary. In fact, we're going to get ice cream! First stop is Ben and Jerry's! We're actually getting ice cream, though, I'm sorry. I don't know you well enough.

However, for the sake of argument, let's say that I'd buy you one of every flavor of ice cream. However, that leads to several questions.

First of all, is everything listed there even ice cream? Does frozen yogurt count? How about non-dairy ice cream? Do pint slices? What about doggie treat ice cream and and pint slices? Hell, I'm sure someone could even argue that the frozen snackable dough is ice cream. See, I promised you frozen treats, but in fulfilling it led you to a land of epistemological suffering.

Now, once that bit of torture is finished, look at all the flavors that I'd buy you in this scenario. Carefully consider them, and assume that there's a way where I could get you to eat all of them over time, like one flavor a night. Can you really say that you would want to eat every single one of these? Everything from Cherry Garcia to Phish Food to Peanut Butter World? Or maybe we could have something from the Flavor Graveyard?

More importantly, can you see someone not wanting, or not physically being able to eat some of these flavors and still liking ice cream? And can you see someone saying they hate ice cream but making an exception for some of these flavors?

An ice cream word, as I define it, is a word that encompasses so many things it becomes hard to define it. Like saying "I like ice cream," it becomes almost useless because, while it may be true, must be followed up by a question like, "what flavors do you like?" or "do you have any allergies?" in order to act on it.

Why It Matters
There's this YouTuber who reviews comics who I sometimes listen to. He's a Channel Awesome alum who goes by the screen name Linkara. I like him, he makes some good points and is pretty good at his job. If he's reading this (and he seems like the kind of guy who'll eventually see this,) I just want to say that I'm not here to attack him. He's just a really great example.

You see, sometimes he'll do something like say, "I am a capitalist" or "I am a feminist." Now, it isn't those positions that annoy me. It's the idea that these are self-explanatory statements. To be fair, he'll say things like that after an egregious violation of said philosophy and begin a tirade (except for his "I am a man!" running gag.)

However, when you say something like "I am a feminist," you run into a lot of pitfalls because everyone has their own interpretation of what a feminist is