Knives Out for the S-Word

I love a good whodunnit, and the Knives Out series is a good one. I liked it more than the most recent Hercule Poirot triplet from Kenneth Branagh.

In order of my personal preference: Knives Out > Wake Up Dead Man > Glass Onion.

I also noticed how Andrew Scott's character, a writer, mentions Substack in a dialogue:

I’m not sure how happy the Substack executives are with this mention, given the context, but credit where it’s due: the brand has become so widely recognised as a type of blog that even Hollywood/Netflix scripts reference it. Pretty sure the line would have been something like, “This is my last-chance ticket out of blogging hell,” before Substack existed.

I think it’s a case of what linguists call appellativization -- when a brand name crosses over into everyday language and becomes a common noun, or even a verb, as it did with Google.

Still, there is a reason I’m not blogging on that platform, even though my visibility might have been greater there.

Don’t be like Rian Johnson. Don’t call it a Substack.