Long before Mayweather and Pacquiao duked it out, and for nearly as long as it took to get those two in the ring together, “fascinating” and “awesome” have been building their respective legends and “camps” and sharpening their skills. If you don’t believe it, just consider how everything today is “fascinating” and “awesome.”

Here’s the way I understand it. Feel free to disagree with me or come up with your own ideas on the subject.

Those who find everything “fascinating” are usually older people. They are the pipe smokers and needlepoint group. They tend to be quiet, contemplative and watchful, carefully weighing the give and take of forces, factors and attractions as they understand them. The preferred beverages of those who find everything “fascinating” are coffee and hot tea.

Those who find so many “awesome” things are typically younger than the “fascinating” crowd. Their beverages of choice are usually named “Jolt,” “Pepsi Max,” “Mountain Dew,” or “Red Bull.” Perhaps it’s all the caffeine that makes this group find so many things “awesome” in knee-jerk fashion. This “app” is “awesome.” That movie was “awesome.” That boy or girl is “awesome.” This skateboard is “awesome” and so was that trick performed on the “awesome” skateboard.

The “fascinating” group finds scientific insight and discoveries “fascinating.” A self-help book is “fascinating.” Another man or woman can be “fascinating,” yes, but the person so deemed is either from another country or has a peculiar insight or “gift” most don’t possess (e.g. talking to the dead, astral projection, meditation, levitation).

A car wreck can be “awesome” as can a street fight. Historical trends in the Stock Market and a family genealogy, on the other hand, are “fascinating.” With “awesome” anything is possible: aliens, Bigfoot, a movie sequel or prequel, the prom, or permission to drive the family station wagon for the first time. “Awesome” anticipates the future; heck, the future itself is “awesome.” “Fascinating,” however, looks backward; it isn’t “fascinating” until it’s finished and deemed “fascinating.”

Take the fight reference with which this noodling exercise began: Mayweather vs. Pacquiao.

One group, high on Jolt Cola, considered the legendary “boxers” involved, the amount of money they would be paid, and the sparkling venue and announced, “Awe-some!” The other group, sipping green tea and looking at the “prizefight” and “combatants” from a sociological perspective – perhaps considering the whole event as an experiment in hero worship and human values – whispers like Mr. Spock, “Fass-cinating!”

The point is neither group would have been right. The fight wasn’t “awesome” or “fascinating”; it was an overpriced, overblown, overhyped event filled with media spin and involving disputants who couldn’t deliver an entertaining fight for a paycheck that was definitely “awesome.”

Seriously, there isn’t that much today that deserves the “awesome” and “fascinating” labels. Even something designated “shock and awe” a decade or so ago proved to be little more than an expensive fireworks display. If it’s happening somewhere in deep deep space and it involves black holes, streaking comets and worlds exploding, best save your “awesome” and “fascinating” opinions for that. What’s going on down here is decidedly less, that is, unless Aldous Huxley was right: “Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.”

Now that’s “fass-cinating.”    

Bob Morgan is a retired, award-winning journalist and author.