7 ms·

I'd not call pronouns a fad. They're just helpful info to talk about others.

anildash 4y ago
Yeah, there’s a reason they don’t describe the (far more common) public announcement of religious affiliation a fad, even though that’s far beyond social media profiles and even goes to people wearing weird jewelry. It’s just that that’s a form of identification that confirms to the commenter’s political goals.
babyshake 4y ago
Pronouns are not a fad. The idea that everyone should be very publicly announcing their pronouns IMO is a fad that won't last for more than a few years as a mainstream phenomenon. I do understand the motivations to do it though.
- after_care 4y ago
  Pronouns in profiles is at least four years old is some mainstream contexts [0]. I'm unsure that it is a fad because on the internet there can be very little other signaling of someone's gender. [0] https://blog.asana.com/2018/05/new-profile-setting-pronouns-asana/ https://blog.asana.com/2018/05/new-profile-setting-pronouns-...
  - ZoomZoomZoom 4y ago
    Don't you consider revealing any personal information about yourself, including gender, a fad?
    - after_care 4y ago
      I think that's a long enough running practice that it cannot be classified as a fad.
    - viraptor 4y ago
      Keep in mind that many languages are inherently gendered and to ask someone "what did you today?" for example in Polish, you need to use the right gender. Answering anything will also reveal you gender.
      - KSPAtlas 4y ago
        Only if you declare yourself masculine or feminine, doesn't go any further. Someone could be non-binary and declare themselves more feminine than masculine
        matkoniecz 4y ago
        In some languages it is impossible to avoid this.
        languageserver 4y ago
        well, luckily most languages are modernizing to accommodate marginalized people! Historical patterns are no excuse to deliberately misgender or genderify language. E.g. for Spanish a lot of people use an X or @ instead of -o -a, same in German. In Scandinavia hön as a pronoun. In mean eyes what is most important: grammatical correctness or kindness?
        janto 4y ago
        Truthful description of relevant info is most important. The constructed profile of the person I'm talking to online is uninteresting to me. You might actually be a dog for all I know. If you want me to play along so you're never confronted with being identified as a dog... then I'm not sure I'm really doing you a favor. Maybe the kindest thing is not to play along with your language game.
        languageserver 4y ago
        > Maybe the kindest thing is not to play along with your language game. My comment was in response to someone indicating that certain European languages forced you to know the gender of the person you were speaking to. So, the "language game" is already ongoing. This is why people have constructed careful expansions to the grammar, to make language non-genderized. What is the alternative? To assume everyone identifies as a male?
    - magicalist 4y ago
      > Don't you consider revealing any personal information about yourself, including gender, a fad? We're coming up on twenty years since Myspace, so, anyone guessing it was a fad was wrong.
    - hkt 4y ago
      It beats everybody saying "asl????" all the time, something I always found a bit unsettling.
      - Handytinge 4y ago
        14/f/cal u?
    - enneff 4y ago
      I don’t think people expressing their identity markers online is going to stop happening anytime soon. Gender is a pretty fundamental part of most people’s identity.
      - JYellensFuckboy 4y ago
        The fad in question doesn't concern how closely people identify with their gender in real, normal life. It concerns their aptitude to announce their gender prior to any online interaction whatsoever.
    - memish 4y ago
      Yes, it used to be a fad to not identify anything.
      - exikyut 4y ago
        Albeit one that arguably lasted for a very, very long time. From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30943039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30943039 recently (also posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23732384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23732384 a couple years ago): > ...[N]etworks like Friendster, MySpace, YouTube, and, later, Facebook and Twitter were dissolving the boundaries between social groups that had long shaped personal relations and identities. Before social media, you spoke to different “audiences” — family members, friends, colleagues, and so forth — in different ways. You modulated your tone of voice, your words, your behavior, and even your appearance to suit whatever social “context” you were in (workplace, home, school, nightclub, etc.) and then readjusted the presentation of yourself when you moved into another context. > On a social network ... all those different contexts collapsed into a single context. Whenever you posted a message or a photograph or a video, it could be seen by your friends, your parents, your coworkers, your bosses, and your teachers, not to mention the amorphous mass known as the general public. And, because the post was recorded, it could be seen by future audiences as well as the immediate one. When people realized they could no longer present versions of themselves geared to different audiences — it was all one audience now — they had to grapple with a new sort of identity crisis.
    - anshorei 4y ago
      No, it's all a ruse by companies that want to sell your data. I grew up with "don't use your real name online", "don't post pictures of yourself", etc. And I still believe that's how it should be.
  - jazzyjackson 4y ago
    Mr / Ms worked for a long time
- ashtonkem 4y ago
  I think its too early to declare it a fad. It hasn’t been around long enough en masse to know whether that’ll be the norm, or disappear yet. We’ll know in a year or two.
Kadin 4y ago
Yes, but the speed at which the behavior spread (at least on Twitter) was clearly a sort of viral phenomenon, and certainly looked like a fad. Maybe it'll stick around if it's useful to enough people, maybe it won't, maybe application designers will figure out a way to include it in the user's avatar or encode it in some aspect of how a user's name is displayed, rather than overloading the friendly-name field or whatever Twitter calls it.
- jjcon 4y ago
  > maybe application designers will figure out a way to include it in the user's avatar Otherwise known as having a picture of yourself as your profile picture? > or encode it in some aspect of how a user's name is displayed And known as having a name. This reads like SV bubble nonsense or well written satire, can't decide which.
- jazzyjackson 4y ago
  > encode it in some aspect of how a user's name is displayed perhaps by prefixing it with an honorific of some kind

Yeah, there’s a reason they don’t describe the (far more common) public announcement of religious affiliation a fad, even though that’s far beyond social media profiles and even goes to people wearing weird jewelry. It’s just that that’s a form of identification that confirms to the commenter’s political goals.

babyshake 4y ago

Pronouns are not a fad. The idea that everyone should be very publicly announcing their pronouns IMO is a fad that won't last for more than a few years as a mainstream phenomenon. I do understand the motivations to do it though.

after_care 4y ago
Pronouns in profiles is at least four years old is some mainstream contexts [0]. I'm unsure that it is a fad because on the internet there can be very little other signaling of someone's gender. [0] https://blog.asana.com/2018/05/new-profile-setting-pronouns-asana/ https://blog.asana.com/2018/05/new-profile-setting-pronouns-...
- ZoomZoomZoom 4y ago
  Don't you consider revealing any personal information about yourself, including gender, a fad?
  - after_care 4y ago
    I think that's a long enough running practice that it cannot be classified as a fad.
  - viraptor 4y ago
    Keep in mind that many languages are inherently gendered and to ask someone "what did you today?" for example in Polish, you need to use the right gender. Answering anything will also reveal you gender.
    - KSPAtlas 4y ago
      Only if you declare yourself masculine or feminine, doesn't go any further. Someone could be non-binary and declare themselves more feminine than masculine
      - matkoniecz 4y ago
        In some languages it is impossible to avoid this.
        languageserver 4y ago
        well, luckily most languages are modernizing to accommodate marginalized people! Historical patterns are no excuse to deliberately misgender or genderify language. E.g. for Spanish a lot of people use an X or @ instead of -o -a, same in German. In Scandinavia hön as a pronoun. In mean eyes what is most important: grammatical correctness or kindness?
        janto 4y ago
        Truthful description of relevant info is most important. The constructed profile of the person I'm talking to online is uninteresting to me. You might actually be a dog for all I know. If you want me to play along so you're never confronted with being identified as a dog... then I'm not sure I'm really doing you a favor. Maybe the kindest thing is not to play along with your language game.
        languageserver 4y ago
        > Maybe the kindest thing is not to play along with your language game. My comment was in response to someone indicating that certain European languages forced you to know the gender of the person you were speaking to. So, the "language game" is already ongoing. This is why people have constructed careful expansions to the grammar, to make language non-genderized. What is the alternative? To assume everyone identifies as a male?
  - magicalist 4y ago
    > Don't you consider revealing any personal information about yourself, including gender, a fad? We're coming up on twenty years since Myspace, so, anyone guessing it was a fad was wrong.
  - hkt 4y ago
    It beats everybody saying "asl????" all the time, something I always found a bit unsettling.
    - Handytinge 4y ago
      14/f/cal u?
  - enneff 4y ago
    I don’t think people expressing their identity markers online is going to stop happening anytime soon. Gender is a pretty fundamental part of most people’s identity.
    - JYellensFuckboy 4y ago
      The fad in question doesn't concern how closely people identify with their gender in real, normal life. It concerns their aptitude to announce their gender prior to any online interaction whatsoever.
  - memish 4y ago
    Yes, it used to be a fad to not identify anything.
    - exikyut 4y ago
      Albeit one that arguably lasted for a very, very long time. From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30943039 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30943039 recently (also posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23732384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23732384 a couple years ago): > ...[N]etworks like Friendster, MySpace, YouTube, and, later, Facebook and Twitter were dissolving the boundaries between social groups that had long shaped personal relations and identities. Before social media, you spoke to different “audiences” — family members, friends, colleagues, and so forth — in different ways. You modulated your tone of voice, your words, your behavior, and even your appearance to suit whatever social “context” you were in (workplace, home, school, nightclub, etc.) and then readjusted the presentation of yourself when you moved into another context. > On a social network ... all those different contexts collapsed into a single context. Whenever you posted a message or a photograph or a video, it could be seen by your friends, your parents, your coworkers, your bosses, and your teachers, not to mention the amorphous mass known as the general public. And, because the post was recorded, it could be seen by future audiences as well as the immediate one. When people realized they could no longer present versions of themselves geared to different audiences — it was all one audience now — they had to grapple with a new sort of identity crisis.
  - anshorei 4y ago
    No, it's all a ruse by companies that want to sell your data. I grew up with "don't use your real name online", "don't post pictures of yourself", etc. And I still believe that's how it should be.
- jazzyjackson 4y ago
  Mr / Ms worked for a long time
ashtonkem 4y ago
I think its too early to declare it a fad. It hasn’t been around long enough en masse to know whether that’ll be the norm, or disappear yet. We’ll know in a year or two.

Kadin 4y ago

Yes, but the speed at which the behavior spread (at least on Twitter) was clearly a sort of viral phenomenon, and certainly looked like a fad. Maybe it'll stick around if it's useful to enough people, maybe it won't, maybe application designers will figure out a way to include it in the user's avatar or encode it in some aspect of how a user's name is displayed, rather than overloading the friendly-name field or whatever Twitter calls it.

jjcon 4y ago
> maybe application designers will figure out a way to include it in the user's avatar Otherwise known as having a picture of yourself as your profile picture? > or encode it in some aspect of how a user's name is displayed And known as having a name. This reads like SV bubble nonsense or well written satire, can't decide which.
jazzyjackson 4y ago
> encode it in some aspect of how a user's name is displayed perhaps by prefixing it with an honorific of some kind