It's the stupid stupid, stupid

One expression I hate is "it's the something, stupid." I hate it. I hate its every smug, superficial, self-satisfied, know-it-all character.

But I find "it's the user experience, stupid" and its variants particularly irritating. Today Jason invoked "it's the user experience stupid" again. This weekend it was Gerry McGovern with "it's the content, stupid." The other Jason said it a couple of months ago. It's been attributed to a Yahoo! executive.

I'd very much like to never hear this expression again. It's ugly, it's worthless, it's hackneyed. Beyond that, I can think of four pretty good reasons for killing it:

• It's simplistic. "It's the user experience, stupid" devalues other kinds creativity and innovation that make products successful. The iTunes Music Store, Google Maps, Gmail, Amazon Yellow Pages--all of which have been used as "stupid" examples--involve significant technological and interface improvements. The iTunes Music Store is also an elegant solution to a complex business problem, and it's probably more remarkable on that front than its user interface. We can't forget that user experience is multi-dimensional--people value experiences for different reasons. And people place different values on user experience itself. UX can be a key differentiator for some products, but it's not the only one.
• It's arrogant. Nothing wrong with confidence or vision, but for me arrogance is the number one indicator of poor design. User experience work requires fair amount of humility and empathy. That's just a necessary part of understanding clients and their users. I have a healthy ego that often needs to be checked so I can do good work--the more I park my ego and listen attentively to people's needs, the better I get. (I don't think Kottke or Fried or McGovern are arrogant--it's the expression that's arrogant.)
• Who's stupid, anyway? In its original Clinton construction, "it's the economy stupid" cast the Republicans as stupid in a three-way conversation with the Democrats and the American public. But when Jason says "it's the user experience, stupid" who is the stupid he's referring to? Me, the reader? Or people who don't "get" user experience? Were we having a conversation with them? Do you see what I mean? Rhetorically it's just all wrong.
• As a sales pitch, it sucks. For all the reasons listed above, there's probably no worse way of saying user experience is really important than "it's the user experience, stupid." No one outside of the UX club gets it, or will get it, or will be inclined to think more positively about user experience upon hearing it. It regresses the dialogue about the value of user experience. It, in itself, is stupid. It reminds most intelligent people of James Carville, and he's really annoying.

I could go on.