The insidious corporate "we"

I went on a little rant about one of my biggest corporate writing pet peeves, and today Slate was good enough to publish it: “We’re Going to Be Using ‘We’ a Little Less.”

I don’t want to give the whole article away, but it’s basically what the title says. Corporations use we to conceal the power differential between the C-suite and regular employees. I write for a large corporation, and my day job is basically to throw that pronoun around as much as possible. I feel gross about it!

Recently I made a promise to myself that whenever I get a bee in my bonnet, I’ll whip up 1,000 words on the subject and see if someone will give me a few hundred bucks for it. A more lucrative way to be annoyed. So far it seems to be working…