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What's up with all the language games lately? "Defund the police". No no, we don't actually mean defund the police... "Anti work". No no, we don't actually me

What's up with all the language games lately? "Defund the police". No no, we don't actually mean defund the police... "Anti work". No no, we don't actually mean we're anti work...

ReaLNero 5y ago
It's catchy, it attracts attention, and it makes people learn what the movement is about. It's one thing to say "defund the police", and it's another to say "penalize police brutality, take police funds and use them to fund social workers trained to disarm situations without using violence, etc."
- bufbupa 5y ago
  > makes people learn what the movement is about. I don't know about that. More like it muddies the waters and leads to miscommunication and polarization
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Gareth321 5y ago
  “Reform the force” It’s not hard to come up with a catchy tagline that doesn’t completely misrepresent the movement. Thing is, the movement is about defunding police. They’re not shy about that: https://defundthepolice.org/ https://defundthepolice.org/
  - brimble 5y ago
    I do not understand why this is regarded as so radical, once I actual sat down and thought it through. They never do anything about property crime, even for middle class white people out in middle class 'burbs. The one time we had a shooting anywhere nearby it was really weird and looked a whole lot like a (small-time—the dude was clearly not a seasoned pro, as he wandered into the wrong house first, telling the occupants they weren't who he was after before leaving) organized crime hit, and AFAIK they never solved it even with several witnesses, it happening in broad daylight, and both victims surviving, plus the guy apparently traveling a good long way on foot to and from the scene, and that was years ago, so they're 0/1 on scary violent crime in my area. I can't imagine they'd do better in a more typical case, unless it's one of those incredibly obvious "the boyfriend did it" situations that any idiot could solve in two minute flat. Traffic enforcement should probably be someone else's job anyway, not the police. Imagine how many fewer police officers we could have if they didn't spend 75% of their time sitting on the side of the road with a radar gun, and how much cheaper people who only did that would be—I think we only maintain the status quo because police benefit from fines & seizures, so they don't want to lose that, and as an excuse to fish for other (mostly victimless) crimes or "crimes" (like having too much money in the passenger seat). I don't really care one way or the other, but if folks in less-nice parts of town want to try getting rid of them, seems OK to me. If it goes very wrong, I expect they'll get experience practically all the downside, so if they think it's a good idea, cool, let's try it. They're mostly dead weight from my perspective anyway—I don't get why actually defunding them, at least to try it out and see what happens, is such a big deal. They're incredibly ineffective and unhelpful, at best. Starting from scratch and seeing what we actually need to pay for doesn't seem like a crazy idea.
  - jackson1442 5y ago
    Right, it's about defunding the police, but it doesn't mean "defund the police and change absolutely nothing else," just like most other movements. You can't put a movement's entire mission into its name.
Zircom 5y ago
To be fair /r/antiwork USED to be actually be about not working and discussions on how that might be accomplished(ex UBI or government works programs). But as it got more popular it quickly turned into what it is today, which is mostly fake screenshots of people telling their bosses off.
- dvtrn 5y ago
  I was a long time reader of antiwork because of the former, and ended up leaving because of the latter. These days it’s absolutely reeking with stupendously bad takes about employment law and workers rights that in most cases aren’t actual laws and aren’t actual issues of “workers rights” just “shitty communication between functioning adults”. But that’s a story as common as blue skies and chirping birds: once your favorite sub-Reddit gets big enough…it starts to stink.
  - anthonypasq 5y ago
    once anything gets big, it starts to stink. Call me an elitist, but the average person has wretched taste.
    - dvtrn 5y ago
      "A person is smart, people are dumb, dangerous, panicky animals" - An alien invasion movie Not gonna say I subscribe in text, but in merit...I mean...
- Salgat 5y ago
  My take on /r/antiwork is that people not working is the end goal, which is the hope for a true futuristic utopia right? Obviously we can't reach that yet, so people compromise by wanting better working conditions in the meantime.
  - gruez 5y ago
    Kind of like how the people in the soviet union were working towards a true communist utopia?
rootusrootus 5y ago
Lately? Catchy slogans have always been a thing.
luke0016 5y ago
It's a sophist play on emotions. I don't think there's actual malice behind it, though. More that people struggle to assert themselves and provide direct, well-reasoned arguments. So, exaggerating or throwing meaning away altogether is an easy alternative. It is also particularly useful in obscuring a lack of any sort of coherent plan or proposed action(s) when one is angry/frustrated/etc. To some extent I also believe it's natural to try to elicit an emotional response from the other "side," because then you can focus on attacking their words, tone, character, etc instead of engaging in reasoned discourse and debate. You get a bit of an automatic advantage if your opponent is already in an emotionally charged state. From what I've seen, the phrases you mention are pretty good at that too. All of this ends up doing more harm than good most, if not all, of the time.
- sjg007 5y ago
  It is a time tested political tool to capture power by redefining the narrative. It's very effective as is the other strategy of manufacturing crises like the teaching of critical race theory in K-12 school or having to wear masks in schools.
  - luke0016 5y ago
    I actually support masks in schools. There's solid scientific evidence backing it as a mechanism to help limit the spread of COVID. Until all ages are able to be vaccinated, it seems like a prudent course of action. It's unfortunate that people are trying to turn such things into political statements.
    - nomel 5y ago
      > limit the spread of COVID I think it can be claimed that it limits the rate of spread, not total spread/infections.
      - sjg007 5y ago
        Think logically about what you just wrote... Masks can and do in fact limit the total spread/infections.
CountDrewku 5y ago
- mbg721 5y ago
  What's the antidote? There can be new names for anything, but it's hard to get them to stick.
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    While I agree with you about the race issue, I do not think the idea of leftist ideology applies here as both sides are opportunistic such as your analogy.
    - mbg721 5y ago
      I think my own question is something of a trap; in order to answer it, Americans would need a single, definable culture, and just about half of us have one. Just ask the right half.
  - CountDrewku 5y ago
    To continuously call them out on their bs and refuse to bend to them when they resort to childish name calling. "I don't care that you think I'm racist, your opinion is irrelevant." As you can see they've already started flagging me for just mentioning the facts of what they're doing. I'm sure one of them will come along with some -ist inflammatory remark soon.
thesuitonym 5y ago
[flagged]
- danShumway 5y ago
  There is a fairly good point here that when people argue that politician X is defunding the military or defunding schools, nobody assumes that they mean that they've ended public education or disbarred the military. We have a general social understanding of the word "defund" that also encapsulates "moving money/responsibilities from one department to another one." So it feels a little bit like a double standard to in this case assume that it necessarily means complete abolition.
  - encryptluks2 5y ago
    Because people that work in the industry want to exaggerate the issue to try to get more funding and support.
    - danShumway 5y ago
      Oh sure, I get that. Any effort to change policing in America is always going to be treated like it's extreme, period. I've seen press reports arguing that merely holding police funding steady and not increasing budgets is "defunding" them. But I think thesuitonym is still right to point out that this is inconsistent with how these words are regularly used in other contexts. There are people directly under their post arguing that no, defund literally means removing all money, the dictionary says so -- and that's just a really silly argument if we look at how the word is used most commonly in politics. When people across multiple political parties are arguing about defunding everything from schools, to the IRS, to NASA, to the military, to the Post Office, it's just not honest for people to argue that in this specific case we should should look at the first result in Webster and ignore everything else.
- standardsam 5y ago
  defund: verb. prevent (a group or organization) from continuing to receive funds
fullshark 5y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
kansface 5y ago
The sub was originally anarchists who literally believe in not working - read the linked posts in the sidebar. It was taken over by socialists but the name stuck.
- leadingthenet 5y ago
  Anarchists taken over by socialists, hah. A tale as old as time.
- orthecreedence 5y ago
  Anarchists are, in general, a subset of socialists. You have wacky things like anarcho-capitalists, but it's difficult to take them seriously. There are some rigorous ancaps who truly believe that somehow the state is not needed to protect absentee ownership of property and that this arrangement will be a net benefit to humanity, but many of them simply think the government is the only thing stopping them from owning a zeppelin and wearing a top hat.
  - slothtrop 5y ago
    Anything with an anarcho prefix can't be taken seriously.
shrikant 5y ago
Yeah wtf, Hacker News shows me next to nothing about cutting/chopping things down with repeated blows.
- Frost1x 5y ago
  Isn't that what comment sections are? /s ;)
beepbooptheory 5y ago
The simple answer is there are no games, there are just liberals taking slogans from more radical places and toning them down or flipflopping to be more palatable. It's more an effect of the general confusions of the internet, and people not being sure what they want, but knowing that things are wrong. The crowd around here, of course, always constantly jumps on this as if it is all one big inconsistent argument from a specific group. Selectively forgetting in these moments what the internet is like in general. It's funny, just look at the peer replies here, people are so excited to point out the patent inconsistency, the naive radicals who don't know what they want; obviously because people who would even have something close to those thoughts must be confused and irrational.
- dathinab 5y ago
  > The simple answer is there is no games, there are just liberals taking slogans from more radical places and toning them down or flipflopping to be more palatable. It's more an effect of the general confusions of the internet, and people not being sure what they want, but knowing that things are wrong. To some degree it's click bait, and people getting used to it. Like "anti work" being the click bait version of "anti how work is currently handled".
hnaccount141 5y ago
In both of these cases "we" is a group of thousands of people with varying opinions. There are absolutely plenty of people who very much believe in defunding the police and ending work. As both movements have grown more popular we've naturally seen more people who agree with the general spirit of the movement but hold more moderate views.
- Gareth321 5y ago
  If someone doesn’t want to defund the police then I don’t see how they can “agree with the general spirit” unless they want to defund the police. It’s in the name. You can equivocate about anything else but not that. Same for anti-work. I suppose you identified the potential problem here: people inferring that “defund the police” doesn’t actually mean “defund the police” and ascribing softer, feel-good intentions which aren’t there.
  - andrei_says_ 5y ago
    I prefer “stop pouring insane amounts of money into police funding and tasking the police force with fixing issues completely unfixable by a police force and instead redirect some of the ridiculously inflated police funds to appropriate solutions.” But it’s a bit long.
    - lanfeust6 5y ago
      "reform the police" is rather short. Not sufficient?
  - hnaccount141 5y ago
    I guess my point is more that I don't think it's actually that common for people to say they want to defund the police but not mean it. I was thinking more of a case like this: If someone is already outraged about police brutality and they see that a "defund the police" rally is happening, there's a greater chance they'll go as it offers them an opportunity to express their general dissatisfaction with the police regardless of whether they agree 100% with the specific ideology of the organizer. When the headline the next day reads "10000 Attend Defund the Police Rally", this leads to the perception that 10000 people believe in defunding the police when the actual number is much smaller
kstrauser 5y ago
That’s been a thing forever. See also: “states’ rights”, “small government”, “personal responsibility”, none of which actually mean what they say on the label.
- RoboticWater 5y ago
  The difference here is that the slogans you listed are usually euphemisms for something more insidious. Anti-work and defund the police are the exact opposite—deliberately inflammatory slogans that exaggerate (if not outright contradict) their underlying movements. The former just seem like good politics: "states' rights" allowed slave owners to court people who were worried about "big government" while conveniently ignoring the grave injustice that's actually occurring. The latter seems like good twitter politics; it'll get good engagement for being so inflammatory, but at the end of the day, most people don't actually agree.
evilduck 5y ago
Tag lines have been short and catchy for as long as humans have been shouting them or trying to put them on signage. Has there ever been a time when a group of protesters flew under the banner of a long nuanced argument instead?
mehphp 5y ago
As far as I can tell /r/antiwork originally meant just that. Then it evolved into what it is today.
ajkjk 5y ago
The most inflammatory expression wins out via natural selection, because the others are less repeated and retweeted. Anyway, "Anti work" may as well be parsed as "Anti The-Kind-Of-Bullshit-Work-We've-Been-Doing". A totally reasonable interpretation.
slothtrop 5y ago
Yep, misleading buzzwords used as rhetorical devices. Their use reveals intent not to further understanding, but to create discord. The media loves it, op-eds can keep attacking strawmen and people basically talk past each other. "cultural appropriation" - no no, we mean cultural appropriation but from minorities (it's amusing that the popular definitions you see of cultural appropriation have cultural appropriation in it). "white fragility" - no no, we don't mean white people are fragile but that some are uncomfortable talking about race issues If you have to explain what your shitty buzzword means every time, then it's not designed to convey your bait-and-switch definition.
jklinger410 5y ago
Intentional psi ops designed to create overreactions on both sides. Narratives in this country have to be fabricated for that effect before they are accepted. A single voice may have freedom of speech, but the accepted narrative is controlled and much louder.
- slothtrop 5y ago
  It's what fuels culture wars and allows them to overshadow more pertinent issues. Media understands the power of irresponsible, incendiary language as bludgeons.
WhompingWindows 5y ago
There have been language games since the dawn of time. Our very human speech evolved to allow us to discuss other humans, to gossip, to chat, to play social games like conversation, debate, acting, humor, rapping. Language has been and always will be full of games.
triceratops 5y ago
It's a pretty old game actually. Ever heard of "Starve the beast"?[1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

What's up with all the language games lately? "Defund the police". No no, we don't actually mean defund the police... "Anti work". No no, we don't actually mean we're anti work...

ReaLNero 5y ago

It's catchy, it attracts attention, and it makes people learn what the movement is about. It's one thing to say "defund the police", and it's another to say "penalize police brutality, take police funds and use them to fund social workers trained to disarm situations without using violence, etc."

bufbupa 5y ago
> makes people learn what the movement is about. I don't know about that. More like it muddies the waters and leads to miscommunication and polarization
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Gareth321 5y ago
“Reform the force” It’s not hard to come up with a catchy tagline that doesn’t completely misrepresent the movement. Thing is, the movement is about defunding police. They’re not shy about that: https://defundthepolice.org/ https://defundthepolice.org/
- brimble 5y ago
  I do not understand why this is regarded as so radical, once I actual sat down and thought it through. They never do anything about property crime, even for middle class white people out in middle class 'burbs. The one time we had a shooting anywhere nearby it was really weird and looked a whole lot like a (small-time—the dude was clearly not a seasoned pro, as he wandered into the wrong house first, telling the occupants they weren't who he was after before leaving) organized crime hit, and AFAIK they never solved it even with several witnesses, it happening in broad daylight, and both victims surviving, plus the guy apparently traveling a good long way on foot to and from the scene, and that was years ago, so they're 0/1 on scary violent crime in my area. I can't imagine they'd do better in a more typical case, unless it's one of those incredibly obvious "the boyfriend did it" situations that any idiot could solve in two minute flat. Traffic enforcement should probably be someone else's job anyway, not the police. Imagine how many fewer police officers we could have if they didn't spend 75% of their time sitting on the side of the road with a radar gun, and how much cheaper people who only did that would be—I think we only maintain the status quo because police benefit from fines & seizures, so they don't want to lose that, and as an excuse to fish for other (mostly victimless) crimes or "crimes" (like having too much money in the passenger seat). I don't really care one way or the other, but if folks in less-nice parts of town want to try getting rid of them, seems OK to me. If it goes very wrong, I expect they'll get experience practically all the downside, so if they think it's a good idea, cool, let's try it. They're mostly dead weight from my perspective anyway—I don't get why actually defunding them, at least to try it out and see what happens, is such a big deal. They're incredibly ineffective and unhelpful, at best. Starting from scratch and seeing what we actually need to pay for doesn't seem like a crazy idea.
- jackson1442 5y ago
  Right, it's about defunding the police, but it doesn't mean "defund the police and change absolutely nothing else," just like most other movements. You can't put a movement's entire mission into its name.

Zircom 5y ago

To be fair /r/antiwork USED to be actually be about not working and discussions on how that might be accomplished(ex UBI or government works programs). But as it got more popular it quickly turned into what it is today, which is mostly fake screenshots of people telling their bosses off.

dvtrn 5y ago
I was a long time reader of antiwork because of the former, and ended up leaving because of the latter. These days it’s absolutely reeking with stupendously bad takes about employment law and workers rights that in most cases aren’t actual laws and aren’t actual issues of “workers rights” just “shitty communication between functioning adults”. But that’s a story as common as blue skies and chirping birds: once your favorite sub-Reddit gets big enough…it starts to stink.
- anthonypasq 5y ago
  once anything gets big, it starts to stink. Call me an elitist, but the average person has wretched taste.
  - dvtrn 5y ago
    "A person is smart, people are dumb, dangerous, panicky animals" - An alien invasion movie Not gonna say I subscribe in text, but in merit...I mean...
Salgat 5y ago
My take on /r/antiwork is that people not working is the end goal, which is the hope for a true futuristic utopia right? Obviously we can't reach that yet, so people compromise by wanting better working conditions in the meantime.
- gruez 5y ago
  Kind of like how the people in the soviet union were working towards a true communist utopia?

rootusrootus 5y ago

Lately? Catchy slogans have always been a thing.

luke0016 5y ago

It's a sophist play on emotions. I don't think there's actual malice behind it, though. More that people struggle to assert themselves and provide direct, well-reasoned arguments. So, exaggerating or throwing meaning away altogether is an easy alternative. It is also particularly useful in obscuring a lack of any sort of coherent plan or proposed action(s) when one is angry/frustrated/etc. To some extent I also believe it's natural to try to elicit an emotional response from the other "side," because then you can focus on attacking their words, tone, character, etc instead of engaging in reasoned discourse and debate. You get a bit of an automatic advantage if your opponent is already in an emotionally charged state. From what I've seen, the phrases you mention are pretty good at that too. All of this ends up doing more harm than good most, if not all, of the time.

sjg007 5y ago
It is a time tested political tool to capture power by redefining the narrative. It's very effective as is the other strategy of manufacturing crises like the teaching of critical race theory in K-12 school or having to wear masks in schools.
- luke0016 5y ago
  I actually support masks in schools. There's solid scientific evidence backing it as a mechanism to help limit the spread of COVID. Until all ages are able to be vaccinated, it seems like a prudent course of action. It's unfortunate that people are trying to turn such things into political statements.
  - nomel 5y ago
    > limit the spread of COVID I think it can be claimed that it limits the rate of spread, not total spread/infections.
    - sjg007 5y ago
      Think logically about what you just wrote... Masks can and do in fact limit the total spread/infections.

CountDrewku 5y ago

mbg721 5y ago
What's the antidote? There can be new names for anything, but it's hard to get them to stick.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  While I agree with you about the race issue, I do not think the idea of leftist ideology applies here as both sides are opportunistic such as your analogy.
  - mbg721 5y ago
    I think my own question is something of a trap; in order to answer it, Americans would need a single, definable culture, and just about half of us have one. Just ask the right half.
- CountDrewku 5y ago
  To continuously call them out on their bs and refuse to bend to them when they resort to childish name calling. "I don't care that you think I'm racist, your opinion is irrelevant." As you can see they've already started flagging me for just mentioning the facts of what they're doing. I'm sure one of them will come along with some -ist inflammatory remark soon.

thesuitonym 5y ago

[flagged]

danShumway 5y ago
There is a fairly good point here that when people argue that politician X is defunding the military or defunding schools, nobody assumes that they mean that they've ended public education or disbarred the military. We have a general social understanding of the word "defund" that also encapsulates "moving money/responsibilities from one department to another one." So it feels a little bit like a double standard to in this case assume that it necessarily means complete abolition.
- encryptluks2 5y ago
  Because people that work in the industry want to exaggerate the issue to try to get more funding and support.
  - danShumway 5y ago
    Oh sure, I get that. Any effort to change policing in America is always going to be treated like it's extreme, period. I've seen press reports arguing that merely holding police funding steady and not increasing budgets is "defunding" them. But I think thesuitonym is still right to point out that this is inconsistent with how these words are regularly used in other contexts. There are people directly under their post arguing that no, defund literally means removing all money, the dictionary says so -- and that's just a really silly argument if we look at how the word is used most commonly in politics. When people across multiple political parties are arguing about defunding everything from schools, to the IRS, to NASA, to the military, to the Post Office, it's just not honest for people to argue that in this specific case we should should look at the first result in Webster and ignore everything else.
standardsam 5y ago
defund: verb. prevent (a group or organization) from continuing to receive funds

fullshark 5y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy

kansface 5y ago

The sub was originally anarchists who literally believe in not working - read the linked posts in the sidebar. It was taken over by socialists but the name stuck.

leadingthenet 5y ago
Anarchists taken over by socialists, hah. A tale as old as time.
orthecreedence 5y ago
Anarchists are, in general, a subset of socialists. You have wacky things like anarcho-capitalists, but it's difficult to take them seriously. There are some rigorous ancaps who truly believe that somehow the state is not needed to protect absentee ownership of property and that this arrangement will be a net benefit to humanity, but many of them simply think the government is the only thing stopping them from owning a zeppelin and wearing a top hat.
- slothtrop 5y ago
  Anything with an anarcho prefix can't be taken seriously.

shrikant 5y ago

Yeah wtf, Hacker News shows me next to nothing about cutting/chopping things down with repeated blows.

Frost1x 5y ago
Isn't that what comment sections are? /s ;)

beepbooptheory 5y ago

The simple answer is there are no games, there are just liberals taking slogans from more radical places and toning them down or flipflopping to be more palatable. It's more an effect of the general confusions of the internet, and people not being sure what they want, but knowing that things are wrong. The crowd around here, of course, always constantly jumps on this as if it is all one big inconsistent argument from a specific group. Selectively forgetting in these moments what the internet is like in general. It's funny, just look at the peer replies here, people are so excited to point out the patent inconsistency, the naive radicals who don't know what they want; obviously because people who would even have something close to those thoughts must be confused and irrational.

dathinab 5y ago
> The simple answer is there is no games, there are just liberals taking slogans from more radical places and toning them down or flipflopping to be more palatable. It's more an effect of the general confusions of the internet, and people not being sure what they want, but knowing that things are wrong. To some degree it's click bait, and people getting used to it. Like "anti work" being the click bait version of "anti how work is currently handled".

hnaccount141 5y ago

In both of these cases "we" is a group of thousands of people with varying opinions. There are absolutely plenty of people who very much believe in defunding the police and ending work. As both movements have grown more popular we've naturally seen more people who agree with the general spirit of the movement but hold more moderate views.

Gareth321 5y ago
If someone doesn’t want to defund the police then I don’t see how they can “agree with the general spirit” unless they want to defund the police. It’s in the name. You can equivocate about anything else but not that. Same for anti-work. I suppose you identified the potential problem here: people inferring that “defund the police” doesn’t actually mean “defund the police” and ascribing softer, feel-good intentions which aren’t there.
- andrei_says_ 5y ago
  I prefer “stop pouring insane amounts of money into police funding and tasking the police force with fixing issues completely unfixable by a police force and instead redirect some of the ridiculously inflated police funds to appropriate solutions.” But it’s a bit long.
  - lanfeust6 5y ago
    "reform the police" is rather short. Not sufficient?
- hnaccount141 5y ago
  I guess my point is more that I don't think it's actually that common for people to say they want to defund the police but not mean it. I was thinking more of a case like this: If someone is already outraged about police brutality and they see that a "defund the police" rally is happening, there's a greater chance they'll go as it offers them an opportunity to express their general dissatisfaction with the police regardless of whether they agree 100% with the specific ideology of the organizer. When the headline the next day reads "10000 Attend Defund the Police Rally", this leads to the perception that 10000 people believe in defunding the police when the actual number is much smaller

kstrauser 5y ago

That’s been a thing forever. See also: “states’ rights”, “small government”, “personal responsibility”, none of which actually mean what they say on the label.

RoboticWater 5y ago
The difference here is that the slogans you listed are usually euphemisms for something more insidious. Anti-work and defund the police are the exact opposite—deliberately inflammatory slogans that exaggerate (if not outright contradict) their underlying movements. The former just seem like good politics: "states' rights" allowed slave owners to court people who were worried about "big government" while conveniently ignoring the grave injustice that's actually occurring. The latter seems like good twitter politics; it'll get good engagement for being so inflammatory, but at the end of the day, most people don't actually agree.

evilduck 5y ago

Tag lines have been short and catchy for as long as humans have been shouting them or trying to put them on signage. Has there ever been a time when a group of protesters flew under the banner of a long nuanced argument instead?

mehphp 5y ago

As far as I can tell /r/antiwork originally meant just that. Then it evolved into what it is today.

ajkjk 5y ago

The most inflammatory expression wins out via natural selection, because the others are less repeated and retweeted. Anyway, "Anti work" may as well be parsed as "Anti The-Kind-Of-Bullshit-Work-We've-Been-Doing". A totally reasonable interpretation.

slothtrop 5y ago

Yep, misleading buzzwords used as rhetorical devices. Their use reveals intent not to further understanding, but to create discord. The media loves it, op-eds can keep attacking strawmen and people basically talk past each other. "cultural appropriation" - no no, we mean cultural appropriation but from minorities (it's amusing that the popular definitions you see of cultural appropriation have cultural appropriation in it). "white fragility" - no no, we don't mean white people are fragile but that some are uncomfortable talking about race issues If you have to explain what your shitty buzzword means every time, then it's not designed to convey your bait-and-switch definition.

jklinger410 5y ago

Intentional psi ops designed to create overreactions on both sides. Narratives in this country have to be fabricated for that effect before they are accepted. A single voice may have freedom of speech, but the accepted narrative is controlled and much louder.

slothtrop 5y ago
It's what fuels culture wars and allows them to overshadow more pertinent issues. Media understands the power of irresponsible, incendiary language as bludgeons.

WhompingWindows 5y ago

There have been language games since the dawn of time. Our very human speech evolved to allow us to discuss other humans, to gossip, to chat, to play social games like conversation, debate, acting, humor, rapping. Language has been and always will be full of games.

triceratops 5y ago

It's a pretty old game actually. Ever heard of "Starve the beast"?[1] 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast