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I wonder what your age is in comparison to your chosen ideal of 2005. As I am getting older it is easier to see the patterns in all this. Most people just wan

by slg 5y ago

I wonder what your age is in comparison to your chosen ideal of 2005. As I am getting older it is easier to see the patterns in all this. Most people just want the entire world frozen from the time they were young. That includes everything from the cast of SNL to acceptable language. I have seen enough decades of people complaining about policing language to know that we survived multiple waves of this before 2005 and we will survive all the waves that came and will come after. I would bet that 20 years from now, Gen Z will be waxing nostalgic about the language of today while Gen Alpha and beyond will be pushing for more change. It is just the way language evolves.

SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
I dunno, man. You're right that the term "mainboard" isn't going to kill us, and I wouldn't advise anyone to make this their main crusade in life. But that's a pretty high standard of dismissiveness and I've never seen anyone apply it to language changes that genuinely bug them. If we discovered that Google employees call codebases which have a lot of bugs "gay", and people got angry about it, would you tell them that it's not a big deal because Google has just developed the language a bit?
- lokar 5y ago
  Be careful with the word crusade
- slg 5y ago
  >But that's a pretty high standard of dismissiveness and I've never seen anyone apply it to language changes that genuinely bug them. I am applying that dismissiveness to all objections equally based off their motivation. I don't agree with the argument on either side of the "motherboard/mainboard" debate. But I can emphasize with the motivation of the side pushing for "mainboard" because it is the same as your argument about misusing "gay" being unnaceptable. I disagree with their specific objection but I understand the motivation. I don't understand the side pushing for "motherboard" because the heart of the objection seems to be "things were better when I was young". Presented with those two options, why not side with the people who you would side with if we were arguing over a different word such as "gay"?
  - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
    It's true that things were different when we were young, but that's true of any new phenomenon and it's not the heart of the objection. If young people these days want to avoid saying "wonderful", or use women by default in hypothetical scenarios, or go around checking their pulse while they say "sheeeeesh", I have no real concerns about those things and I think most people on team "motherboard" would agree. The reason I push against "mainboard" is, I think, the analogous concern. While it's possible in principle to type out the letters "mainboard" without meaning anything by it, in practice the people who say it are motivated by a package of ideas about gender which I think are bad and would be harmful for society if they were more broadly adopted. To say "mainboard" would make me appear to be endorsing those ideas.
    - slg 5y ago
      >in practice the people who say it are motivated by a package of ideas about gender which I think are bad and would be harmful for society if they were more broadly adopted I would argue this is a symptom of the same phenomenon and therefore the heart of the objection is still the same.
      - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
        Is it possible in your view for any new trend to be bad and worth fighting against? It's hard for me to see how this doesn't reduce to a content-free "nothing really matters" objection.
        slg 5y ago
        Sure, if there is any evidence behind the objection I can support it. When the objection is some vague claim about it being "harmful for society" without anything to back that up, I will call BS.
Auracle 5y ago
I'm 33, but the reason I chose 2005 was because it was the latest year that I was sure was before "wokeness" was a thing. I also live in the rural Midwest, so I figured that was about how far in the past you on the coast think we are with this sort of thing - and you'd be right, to an extent.
- slg 5y ago
  Which means you were 17 in 2005 which fits my theory perfectly. "Wokeness" might not be a term that existed in 2005, but like I said, there were multiple waves of the same ideal going back before 2005. Maybe you should examine why you are ok with the "political correctness" wave of the 90s and not the "wokeness" wave of the last decade plus. Is it potentially because you didn't see the earlier waves in real-time as a mature adult?

by slg 5y ago

SpicyLemonZest 5y ago

I dunno, man. You're right that the term "mainboard" isn't going to kill us, and I wouldn't advise anyone to make this their main crusade in life. But that's a pretty high standard of dismissiveness and I've never seen anyone apply it to language changes that genuinely bug them. If we discovered that Google employees call codebases which have a lot of bugs "gay", and people got angry about it, would you tell them that it's not a big deal because Google has just developed the language a bit?

lokar 5y ago
Be careful with the word crusade
slg 5y ago
>But that's a pretty high standard of dismissiveness and I've never seen anyone apply it to language changes that genuinely bug them. I am applying that dismissiveness to all objections equally based off their motivation. I don't agree with the argument on either side of the "motherboard/mainboard" debate. But I can emphasize with the motivation of the side pushing for "mainboard" because it is the same as your argument about misusing "gay" being unnaceptable. I disagree with their specific objection but I understand the motivation. I don't understand the side pushing for "motherboard" because the heart of the objection seems to be "things were better when I was young". Presented with those two options, why not side with the people who you would side with if we were arguing over a different word such as "gay"?
- SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
  It's true that things were different when we were young, but that's true of any new phenomenon and it's not the heart of the objection. If young people these days want to avoid saying "wonderful", or use women by default in hypothetical scenarios, or go around checking their pulse while they say "sheeeeesh", I have no real concerns about those things and I think most people on team "motherboard" would agree. The reason I push against "mainboard" is, I think, the analogous concern. While it's possible in principle to type out the letters "mainboard" without meaning anything by it, in practice the people who say it are motivated by a package of ideas about gender which I think are bad and would be harmful for society if they were more broadly adopted. To say "mainboard" would make me appear to be endorsing those ideas.
  - slg 5y ago
    >in practice the people who say it are motivated by a package of ideas about gender which I think are bad and would be harmful for society if they were more broadly adopted I would argue this is a symptom of the same phenomenon and therefore the heart of the objection is still the same.
    - SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
      Is it possible in your view for any new trend to be bad and worth fighting against? It's hard for me to see how this doesn't reduce to a content-free "nothing really matters" objection.
      - slg 5y ago
        Sure, if there is any evidence behind the objection I can support it. When the objection is some vague claim about it being "harmful for society" without anything to back that up, I will call BS.

Auracle 5y ago

I'm 33, but the reason I chose 2005 was because it was the latest year that I was sure was before "wokeness" was a thing. I also live in the rural Midwest, so I figured that was about how far in the past you on the coast think we are with this sort of thing - and you'd be right, to an extent.

slg 5y ago
Which means you were 17 in 2005 which fits my theory perfectly. "Wokeness" might not be a term that existed in 2005, but like I said, there were multiple waves of the same ideal going back before 2005. Maybe you should examine why you are ok with the "political correctness" wave of the 90s and not the "wokeness" wave of the last decade plus. Is it potentially because you didn't see the earlier waves in real-time as a mature adult?