the.com/obfuscation
clarity's natural predator, wearing a suit made of jargon.
means deliberately making something harder to understand than it needs to be, usually to hide intent or incompetence.
from from latin obfuscare, to darken, from ob- (over) plus fuscare (to make dark, from fuscus, dark brown) — literally the act of throwing shade, six centuries before twitter got there.
code sportthe ioccc rewards the most unreadable working code annually
legal usecontracts obfuscate via passive voice and defined-term tricks
malware trickviruses obfuscate code so antivirus scanners miss patterns
opposite virtueorwell called clear writing a political act against it
for instance
enron footnotes — buried billions in debt inside impenetrable special-purpose entities, 2001
ioccc winners — international obfuscated c code contest, running since 1984
eula walls — apple's terms of service run past 20000 words, unread by design
minified javascript — variable names shrunk to single letters, unreadable but functional