Dirty Words in Gaming #4 - Fluff/Crunch

This is more a personal rant, so please feel free to tune out if you don't like want to hear.

Fluff and Crunch are words that typically refer to source books and rules books. Fluff  involves setting or story elements and Crunch is game rules and mechanics. Books are evaluated on how much of each they provide. While I have nothing against books providing both, in fact I think they should, whenever people talk about fluff or crunch there seems to be a general shift in tone, implying that fluff is the end all, be all of gaming.

As far as gaming goes, crunch is slightly more important than fluff. Crunch provides the means for interacting with the world. Without it, you may as well be coauthoring a poorly written short story with a bunch of friends. However, gaming can exist without fluff. Enter the classic dungeon delve.

That being said, only combat is boring, so there needs to be something of a story driving it forward. A deep and enjoyable game really cannot exist without both. So I just really can't stand when people sound all high and mighty about fluff. Plus, I can't stand the words. What's wrong with just calling them setting/story information and mechanics?