6 ms·

why does a company have a say which words are allowed to be used? i mean there are some bad words you shouldn’t use, but i just can’t grasp why is there someth

why does a company have a say which words are allowed to be used? i mean there are some bad words you shouldn’t use, but i just can’t grasp why is there something like “motherboard” on that list?

IAmWorried 5y ago
- JaimeThompson 5y ago
  When do you feel cancel culture started?
  - pageandrew 5y ago
    Started kicking off in universities around 2014-2015, really accelerated on social media (and by extension legacy media) through the Trump years, and has been solidly established across the corporate world as the college students of 2015 entered the workforce.
    - JaimeThompson 5y ago
      In the United States the fundamentalists have been doing it for much longer then that as well as people such as the members of the Parents Music Resource Center who controlled a considerable amount of political power. This idea that it is a recent invention isn't really supported by the reality on the ground. Things like the satanic panic, Dungeons & Dragons / Metal being satanic, Rock being evil, and a host of other things have long been used to remove "undesirable" people for a long time before 2014 on both the local and national level. The extremes have always used shunning and economic warfare tactics to shut up those who disagree with them.
      - flippinburgers 5y ago
        Uhhh ok yeah all those people who lost jobs and couldn't find employment because they listened to rock music/played DnD. Sure. The DnD panic was about kids. It was about kids. I find it absurd to go after DnD like that but I don't recall ever reading about people being shunned, losing there jobs etc as happens these days.
        JaimeThompson 5y ago
        Having lived it yes people got shunned and people got fired for it. Same thing for daring to say that LGBTQ deserved equal rights or to use the term from that time gay people. Much the same happened to some who said that black people deserved equal rights. People have, for many many centuries use various shunning tactics to enforce their will upon others.
      - rayiner 5y ago
        The majority imposing language norms on the minority is fundamentally different than a minority using their influence over media, corporations and institutions to impose language norms on the majority.
    - astura 5y ago
      Lol, come-on, do you really believe this? The first victim of what people call "modern cancel culture" were the Dixie Chicks (now The Chicks) when they made an incredibly mild criticism of president Bush a few days before the invasion of Iraq during a concert in The UK. It costed them their position as one of the top country acts in the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Chicks_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Chicks_controversy
  - IAmWorried 5y ago
    With the rise of social media. The modern "cancelling" could not exist without the viral phenomena that social media enables. Of course, you could always be fired for saying unaceptable things in the past, but now it actually ruins your entire life, you can't escape it.
    - JaimeThompson 5y ago
      Please see my response in this thread.
- CoastalCoder 5y ago
  I'm pretty skeptical of labor unions in the U.S., but I can see how they could help with this kind of issue.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    I'm not sure they wouldn't be on the forefront of coming up with new words to add to the lists.
    - morgante 5y ago
      They 100% would be. In fact, people in the Alphabet Union are on the forefront of DEI initiatives like this.
  - cornel_io 5y ago
    Unfortunately most of the people pushing hardest for unionization in tech are exactly the same people pushing the woke craziness. In fact, one of the main reasons they want unions so badly is to use them to make more and more insane social justice-ey demands and add the illusion that there is broad worker support for them. They do this with the knowledge that most people won't stand up against them out of fear, even though they don't agree with them - the sociopathic Google walkout organizers leveraged this to great effect when they collected signatures and then changed the text of what people had already signed to be a psychotic list of unreasonable demands, knowing that it'd be career suicide for any of us to complain publicly about it (there wasn't much public noise but a lot of us were really pissed about that privately). Surprise, surprise, the overlap between that group and the group later pushing for unionization was nearly 100%.
DannyBee 5y ago
The banned words list they are referring to is about what words should be used in external product documentation and marketing :) Not about what you are allowed to say inside google, or anything like that.
- ushakov 5y ago
  the point still stands though could you please explain to me, a non-native english speaker, why using "mainboard" is better than "motherboard"?
  - slg 5y ago
    It is the same logic as why we switched from "fireman" to "firefighter" or "stewardess" to "fight attendant" decades ago. Because some people find the old word offensive. The only real debate is the size of the "some" and whether that "some" is small enough to ethically ignore.
    - johnnyanmac 5y ago
      Sterwardess doesn't make sense because Stewards are a thing as well. I guess this is just the Actor/Actress debate in this case?
    - sillysaurusx 5y ago
      The thing is, those substitutions are logical because "fireman" doesn't refer to female firefighters. But "motherboard" is different, because "board" doesn't refer to a person.
      - slg 5y ago
        Perhaps, but this is your opinion. Maybe you are in the "some" for certain words and not others. I am not in the "some" for "motherboard" so I can't tell you exactly why people are offended, but I know they are. Whether the rest of us think someone taking offense is logical doesn't stop them from being offended.

IAmWorried 5y ago

JaimeThompson 5y ago
When do you feel cancel culture started?
- pageandrew 5y ago
  Started kicking off in universities around 2014-2015, really accelerated on social media (and by extension legacy media) through the Trump years, and has been solidly established across the corporate world as the college students of 2015 entered the workforce.
  - JaimeThompson 5y ago
    In the United States the fundamentalists have been doing it for much longer then that as well as people such as the members of the Parents Music Resource Center who controlled a considerable amount of political power. This idea that it is a recent invention isn't really supported by the reality on the ground. Things like the satanic panic, Dungeons & Dragons / Metal being satanic, Rock being evil, and a host of other things have long been used to remove "undesirable" people for a long time before 2014 on both the local and national level. The extremes have always used shunning and economic warfare tactics to shut up those who disagree with them.
    - flippinburgers 5y ago
      Uhhh ok yeah all those people who lost jobs and couldn't find employment because they listened to rock music/played DnD. Sure. The DnD panic was about kids. It was about kids. I find it absurd to go after DnD like that but I don't recall ever reading about people being shunned, losing there jobs etc as happens these days.
      - JaimeThompson 5y ago
        Having lived it yes people got shunned and people got fired for it. Same thing for daring to say that LGBTQ deserved equal rights or to use the term from that time gay people. Much the same happened to some who said that black people deserved equal rights. People have, for many many centuries use various shunning tactics to enforce their will upon others.
    - rayiner 5y ago
      The majority imposing language norms on the minority is fundamentally different than a minority using their influence over media, corporations and institutions to impose language norms on the majority.
  - astura 5y ago
    Lol, come-on, do you really believe this? The first victim of what people call "modern cancel culture" were the Dixie Chicks (now The Chicks) when they made an incredibly mild criticism of president Bush a few days before the invasion of Iraq during a concert in The UK. It costed them their position as one of the top country acts in the country. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Chicks_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Chicks_controversy
- IAmWorried 5y ago
  With the rise of social media. The modern "cancelling" could not exist without the viral phenomena that social media enables. Of course, you could always be fired for saying unaceptable things in the past, but now it actually ruins your entire life, you can't escape it.
  - JaimeThompson 5y ago
    Please see my response in this thread.
CoastalCoder 5y ago
I'm pretty skeptical of labor unions in the U.S., but I can see how they could help with this kind of issue.
- bombcar 5y ago
  I'm not sure they wouldn't be on the forefront of coming up with new words to add to the lists.
  - morgante 5y ago
    They 100% would be. In fact, people in the Alphabet Union are on the forefront of DEI initiatives like this.
- cornel_io 5y ago
  Unfortunately most of the people pushing hardest for unionization in tech are exactly the same people pushing the woke craziness. In fact, one of the main reasons they want unions so badly is to use them to make more and more insane social justice-ey demands and add the illusion that there is broad worker support for them. They do this with the knowledge that most people won't stand up against them out of fear, even though they don't agree with them - the sociopathic Google walkout organizers leveraged this to great effect when they collected signatures and then changed the text of what people had already signed to be a psychotic list of unreasonable demands, knowing that it'd be career suicide for any of us to complain publicly about it (there wasn't much public noise but a lot of us were really pissed about that privately). Surprise, surprise, the overlap between that group and the group later pushing for unionization was nearly 100%.

DannyBee 5y ago

The banned words list they are referring to is about what words should be used in external product documentation and marketing :) Not about what you are allowed to say inside google, or anything like that.

ushakov 5y ago
the point still stands though could you please explain to me, a non-native english speaker, why using "mainboard" is better than "motherboard"?
- slg 5y ago
  It is the same logic as why we switched from "fireman" to "firefighter" or "stewardess" to "fight attendant" decades ago. Because some people find the old word offensive. The only real debate is the size of the "some" and whether that "some" is small enough to ethically ignore.
  - johnnyanmac 5y ago
    Sterwardess doesn't make sense because Stewards are a thing as well. I guess this is just the Actor/Actress debate in this case?
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    The thing is, those substitutions are logical because "fireman" doesn't refer to female firefighters. But "motherboard" is different, because "board" doesn't refer to a person.
    - slg 5y ago
      Perhaps, but this is your opinion. Maybe you are in the "some" for certain words and not others. I am not in the "some" for "motherboard" so I can't tell you exactly why people are offended, but I know they are. Whether the rest of us think someone taking offense is logical doesn't stop them from being offended.