Effective Emceeing: Don’t be an Awesome Parrot on Stage

Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 54 seconds. Contains 580 words

As an audience member, have you ever heard an emcee on stage introduce or close an act by describing it as “Awesome”?

That dance performance was … Awesome!

Up next we will have an act that is simply … Awesome!

That accounting presentation was so … Awesome!

Based on these, it seems like everything is “Everything Is Awesome”.

‘Awesome’ is an awesome word, and there is nothing inherently wrong with it. However, people have a tendency to keep using it over and over on stage. It boggles the mind, that of all the words in the world, people choose to use ‘awesome’ as the word to repeat. Maybe it rolls off the tongue better, or maybe it seems to be more impressive than just a simple ‘good’ or ‘great’. Either way, the “one-word-to-describe-it-all” problem is still the same, and it is most definitely not awesome.

The problems of the parrot

Among my group of emcee friends, we’ve begun referring to people who use the word ‘awesome’ to describe everything,  as “Awesome Parrots.” It’s a nice nickname (it sounds awesome!), but it’s also something you want to avoid being.