Motivational speakers must have easily taken to the abbreviations that became popular with text and instant messaging because these people were substituting “u” for “you” long before those communication media came into existence. Still today, the motivational jerks never tire of telling you, although I quickly tire of hearing, that you can’t spell success without “u.”

As hackneyed as that inane saying is, it’s true. However, what they forgot to say is that you also need a “u” to spell failure, misfortune, trouble, nuisance, encumbrance, curse, persecution, trouncing, drubbing, injury, scourge, plague, ruination, injustice, abuse, corruption, inequity, unfairness, prejudice, outrage, holocaust, destruction, slaughter, execution, butchery, liquidation, virulence and, to switch from nouns to an adjective, fucked. So please, enough already with the “u” in success.