A few days ago, the President spoke to a group of Olympic athletes from the Torino Winter Games. Whether it was him or his speechwriter, someone tried way too hard to be cool when he said, “We want to thank all the dudes and dudesses of the snowboarders who are here.”

I think using “dude” alone was trying too hard, but dudesses? Way too hard and way too wrong. No one uses the term dudess. (If you frequently use that terms, please post a comment. I would love to hear about it.) Dudette, maybe, but never dudess.

While trying to be clever and connect with a cool subculture he completely alienated himself. He might as well have screamed, “I don’t have a clue who you are and what you people are like!”

I am sure the snowboarders will get over it.

But what happens when a church tries too hard to be cool?

Have you ever seen a church try so hard to connect with the culture that they ultimately crashed and burned? It’s like the parents trying to be cool by wearing the teenage trends only to end up embarassing their kids.

In person, sometimes you get a chance to recover based on the feedback you get, but in the written word, online and off, you usually don’t get that feedback or that chance. If you seem to be trying to hard to be “cool” or “hip” people will notice it, and they will usually interpret it as a lack of authenticity. Which believe it or not, authenticity ranks extremely high on the list of what generation-x is looking for.

So be real in all your communications, whether visual, verbal, or virtual. And, if you must use some cool lingo, at least check you references—please!

By the way, I would love to see some examples of sites that you feel “try too hard.” Please take a moment and post a comment.