3 ms·
Why is it that we've gone about grossly abusing terms that imply harm to the point that their real meaning is almost entirely lost? The other day there was a b
by im_down_w_otp 10y ago
Why is it that we've gone about grossly abusing terms that imply harm to the point that their real meaning is almost entirely lost?
The other day there was a big thing about how, "Twitter is Fucked" because the platform only allows for "violent" speech. The trivial falsifiability of the claim aside, it was a gross overstatement of the term "violent". The correct term, based on the content of that article, would have been more like "insipid", "vapid", or "derogatory".
Here we have the same thing with the term "neglect", the well-defined construct "child neglect", and the concept of "promotes" with respect to either of those things, and the application of all of them to content that is mundane and innocuous at worst, and can only even border on a depiction of "neglect", let alone the promotion of it, with the most perverse and intentionally inflammatory interpretation of the video.
Are we so distanced from what real "harm", "neglect", and "violence" actually look like that as denizens of tech-culture we must redefine them to instead represent "minor annoyance", "occasionally tended to", and "somewhat offensive"? It just seems like such an unnecessary expression of effete privilege and insularity.
- swasheck 10y agoI just made the connection that the OP of this link is the author. They seem to post links to their own Medium posts so it's not surprising that this is clickbait.