Intentional or not, the word choices in your reply are the reason why my "office politics" alert goes off whenever I visit reddit (enough that I deleted my acco

Intentional or not, the word choices in your reply are the reason why my "office politics" alert goes off whenever I visit reddit (enough that I deleted my account): The word "conspiracy" has become a way (mostly for the media) to assign low/outgroup status to unfavorable theories. In the unlikely case where something is later proven to be true, one can always just say, "okay, but isn't it GOOD that everyone was silently cooperating?" And when it works, it's a tool to move the Overton window by painting the others as loonies. I mean, the idea that a company worth $6B has a political strategy is hardly outlandish. You can have five people working in an office and they'll eventually start to conspire against each other, power games are human nature. "Hate speech" and "alt-right" are similar terms that are not clearly defined, but conveniently serve the dominant discourse. reddit's tolerance for "anyone but the bad guys" was brilliantly summarized by SSC: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything-except-the-outgroup/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anythin... (I agree with the sibling thread that /r/popular looks really fun today! It was a very different place throughout 2020.)