In lieu of The Fingers Weekender, today is a special edition—this year’s second installation of Buzzwords of The Week of The Quarter. But before we get to that, be sure to check out:

And that’s about it. As ever, if someone forwarded this to you, buy a subscription to get next Sunday’s edition straight in your inbox.

The booze industry has been captured by LinkedIn-brained perverts. Allow me to explain.

Used to be, beverage-alcohol executives were a real mixed bag. Some were domineering forces of nature, like August Busch III, or colorfully self-destructive cads that had no business running a business, like August Busch IV. Of course, there are other examples outside the Busch family brood, which is not to be confused with The Busch Family Brewed for reasons that instantly became obvious to anybody brave enough to click that link. But my point here is that people that trafficked drink in this country used to be cranks, geniuses, gangsters, and more. They were what people in my business call “good copy.”

Not no mo’. Part of the reason Fingers has covered the shit out of chaotic figures like Bang Energy’s Jack Owoc and Uncle Nearest’s Fawn Weaver over the years is because their voluminous propensity for public prevarication and self-congratulation is relatively rare. That type of shoot-from-the-hip messaging has been mostly beaten out of the executive corps of the drinks business. That might be good for business, but it is deeply boring for me. Good thing I launched Buzzwords of The Week a few years ago to turn tracking the trade’s media-trained gormlessness into a game. Otherwise I think I would go insane reading shit like this on the regular:

In mid-April, Fingers held its first quarterly runoff of the year to elect the best (worst) instance of this mind-numbing corporatespeak. Our Q1 winner was outgoing Heineken chief executive Dolf Van den Brink, whose “operationalizing and double-clicking on the priorities” pulled out a squeaker against “hybrid vertical-horizontal model” and “degree of cleanliness opportunity.”

Now, we turn our attention to Q2’s offenses against plain speech. Voting for Buzzwords of The Week of Q2 2026 starts now. Because if we don’t laugh at the booze industry’s most LinkedIn-brained perverts, who will?

As a reminder, Buzzwords of The Week are now free to read each Friday, with or without a subscription. But only paying Friends of Fingers are eligible to cast their ballots for the entry they believe most deserving quarterly recognition/ridicule. At the end of the year, each Buzzwords of The Week of The Quarter winner will go on to compete in a final vote to crown the successor to “a lot of concern about the whole immigration question” as Fingers’ Buzzwords of The Week of 2026.

On a procedural note, the polling function on Fingers’ publishing platform only allows for 10 options in a given poll, and there were 13 BoTW entries in Q2. I culled the three least remarkable from the running for the sake of expedience. Is this electioneering? Yes, I guess. Sorry? To the poll:

Because the only thing I cherish more than my deleterious Summer of Loko is an informed participatory democracy, I’ve linked each of the nine Buzzwords of The Week entries from the previous three months for your review. Reappraise thyself of the florid rhetoric and bloodless boardroom equivocation below.

Again, Buzzwords of The Week are now free for all to read, and publish each Friday on the site. Read the archive here.