mediocrity

Sample some new snacks: Summer barbecues are rife with potato-chip mediocrity.

From Slate ● Sep. 4, 2026

When mediocrity is the core objective of an extremely powerful company like this one, success hinges on turning the once-discerning viewer into a machine cog as mindless as one of Netflix’s baffling originals.

From Salon ● Sep. 2, 2026

But above all, he told his students, train yourselves “never to mistake mediocrity, however brilliant, for true greatness.”

From The Wall Street Journal ● Jun. 5, 2026

Compare them to the Kings, who are old, slow and quickly fading into mediocrity.

From Los Angeles Times ● May 16, 2026

You were not expected to aspire to excellence: you were expected to make peace with mediocrity.

From "The Fire Next Time" by James Baldwin

But they were also politicians, self-serving and ambitious, often well-born mediocrities flying high above their general level of talent.

From Washington Post ● Dec. 30, 2022

“Choose or Die” almost sounds like a marketing slogan for Netflix’s scroll of mediocrities — but no, it’s just another horror movie on the streaming service.

From New York Times ● Apr. 15, 2022

These mediocrities, drunk with their own self-importance, equate celebrity, power and wealth with wisdom.

From Salon ● Dec. 8, 2021

Almost all of Hunt’s wistfully exasperated attempts to get Johnson to answer a question – any question – could have been replaced with the howl “I speak for all the mediocrities in the world”.

From The Guardian ● Jul. 12, 2019

It’s why picking the right candidate for a job is so difficult and why, on more occasions than we may care to admit, utter mediocrities sometimes end up in positions of enormous responsibility.

From "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell