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Everything is "offensive" these days - anyone can claim anything is "offensive", and because it's subjective, it's impossible to even be proven wrong. The very

Everything is "offensive" these days - anyone can claim anything is "offensive", and because it's subjective, it's impossible to even be proven wrong. The very word has lost all real meaning.

kotxig 4y ago
definition of "lunatic" - "a person who is mentally ill (not in technical use)." I didn't say it was offensive. If it was called "autistic", the word is not offensive but... why? It's just a really strange choice.
- bheadmaster 4y ago
  > why? It's just a really strange choice. I personally thought it was a witty name. Had a tiny mental chuckle when I read it. Better question is, why not? If it's not offensive, then what is the reason you "wish they had called it something else"? > It's just a really strange choice Doesn't sound like a real criticism to me...
  - kotxig 4y ago
    Let's just put it this way, I'm not advertising in anything associated with my professional credibility that I use "lunatic", for the very obvious reason that it's possibly offensive to some people and that the word offers nothing to convey meaning. I don't have to find it personally offensive to not want to associate with it.
    - thingification 4y ago
      I can understand that as a heuristic. On the other hand, there are other people who might apply a different heuristic and guess that a project named 'lunatic' is less likely to attract the sort of people who might take, for example, a code of conduct as a tool to beat other contributors about the head. (I'm not saying that's you!) I guess there are "swings and roundabouts" and peoples' rules of thumb differ, which is perhaps diversity that's all to the good.
      - kotxig 4y ago
        I think brainf*k is a great example of a potentially offensive name that actually conveys meaning and doesn't harm adoption by its intended audience.
        thingification 4y ago
        To me (without reading any of their stuff, I don't know if this is what they were shooting at), "lunatic" makes me think "high performance" and "this is a very difficult project with high payoff if we succeed, we're a little bit crazy (in a good way) to try, eh?".
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > definition of "lunatic" - "a person who is mentally ill (not in technical use)." Have you, your relatives or your friends ever used the phrases "are you insane?" and "are you out of your mind"? Were they being insesitive. Should you/they be more thoughtful how it would be perceived by other people, that you/they so casually use a very modern (and not 19th century) refernces to mental illness? What about, I don't know, Insane Clown Posse who formed in 1989 and won Outstanding Hip-Hop Artist/Group at Detroit Music Awards? They probably need to re-think their name, too? Looney Tunes? (Looney is the same as Lunatic) Or looking at some of the adjacent terms, perhaps Animaniacs? The list just goes on. And on. And on. AND ON.
goodpoint 4y ago
> Everything is "offensive" these days Spare us the BS. Society is very much able to form opinions on what is widely considered offensive and what is not. Case in point: legal proceedings for libel, threats and so on. Turns out society still gives meaning to words. > it's impossible to even be proven wrong You've been proven wrong right now.
- bheadmaster 4y ago
  > Society is very much able to form opinions on what is widely considered offensive and what is not. Except there isn't an agreed upon opinion, just a certain number of loud individuals trying to silence others, and everyone else who just quietly don't care. > You've been proven wrong right now. I was saying that it's impossible to prove that something isn't offensive. Please take your time to actually understand posts you read before posting angry comments.
  - goodpoint 4y ago
    > Except there isn't an agreed upon opinion, just a certain number of loud individuals trying to silence others Again you are trying to make a strawman, claiming that it's just some minority and you are so brave for standing up to them. It isn't. Open a dictionary and you'll find a number of words clearly defined as offensive. Language isn't just an opinion of few people. > I was saying that it's impossible to prove that something isn't offensive. Please take your time to actually understand posts you read before posting angry comments. Spare us the BS.
    - bheadmaster 4y ago
      > Again you are trying to make a strawman, claiming that it's just some minority Are you implying that it's not? If so, do you have any reasoning to support that claim? > Language isn't just an opinion of few people Language is defined by how people use it. There is no central authority for the meaning, or level of offensiveness, of words. > Spare us the BS. Who's "us"? And what bullshit are you talking about exactly? Your demeaning attitude is not appreciated.
yamtaddle 4y ago
Someone on here recently asserted that ditching the colloquial use of "crazy" had significant mainstream support. I pushed back on people even noticing that it might be a problem, let alone actively choosing not to use it, being anything like a norm outside tiny niches of terminally-online Web users. Sure enough, sensitized to it, I heard an NPR host and a Chipotle ad use it in the colloquial sense within the next week. And those are just the ones I noticed, and that were very-public rather than in private conversations. This stuff's not mainstream and normal people don't care a bit. It's not even caught on in groups worried about impressing the word-police crowd (major advertisers and NPR both qualifying, I should think).

Everything is "offensive" these days - anyone can claim anything is "offensive", and because it's subjective, it's impossible to even be proven wrong. The very word has lost all real meaning.

kotxig 4y ago

definition of "lunatic" - "a person who is mentally ill (not in technical use)." I didn't say it was offensive. If it was called "autistic", the word is not offensive but... why? It's just a really strange choice.

bheadmaster 4y ago
> why? It's just a really strange choice. I personally thought it was a witty name. Had a tiny mental chuckle when I read it. Better question is, why not? If it's not offensive, then what is the reason you "wish they had called it something else"? > It's just a really strange choice Doesn't sound like a real criticism to me...
- kotxig 4y ago
  Let's just put it this way, I'm not advertising in anything associated with my professional credibility that I use "lunatic", for the very obvious reason that it's possibly offensive to some people and that the word offers nothing to convey meaning. I don't have to find it personally offensive to not want to associate with it.
  - thingification 4y ago
    I can understand that as a heuristic. On the other hand, there are other people who might apply a different heuristic and guess that a project named 'lunatic' is less likely to attract the sort of people who might take, for example, a code of conduct as a tool to beat other contributors about the head. (I'm not saying that's you!) I guess there are "swings and roundabouts" and peoples' rules of thumb differ, which is perhaps diversity that's all to the good.
    - kotxig 4y ago
      I think brainf*k is a great example of a potentially offensive name that actually conveys meaning and doesn't harm adoption by its intended audience.
      - thingification 4y ago
        To me (without reading any of their stuff, I don't know if this is what they were shooting at), "lunatic" makes me think "high performance" and "this is a very difficult project with high payoff if we succeed, we're a little bit crazy (in a good way) to try, eh?".
dmitriid 4y ago
> definition of "lunatic" - "a person who is mentally ill (not in technical use)." Have you, your relatives or your friends ever used the phrases "are you insane?" and "are you out of your mind"? Were they being insesitive. Should you/they be more thoughtful how it would be perceived by other people, that you/they so casually use a very modern (and not 19th century) refernces to mental illness? What about, I don't know, Insane Clown Posse who formed in 1989 and won Outstanding Hip-Hop Artist/Group at Detroit Music Awards? They probably need to re-think their name, too? Looney Tunes? (Looney is the same as Lunatic) Or looking at some of the adjacent terms, perhaps Animaniacs? The list just goes on. And on. And on. AND ON.

goodpoint 4y ago

> Everything is "offensive" these days Spare us the BS. Society is very much able to form opinions on what is widely considered offensive and what is not. Case in point: legal proceedings for libel, threats and so on. Turns out society still gives meaning to words. > it's impossible to even be proven wrong You've been proven wrong right now.

bheadmaster 4y ago
> Society is very much able to form opinions on what is widely considered offensive and what is not. Except there isn't an agreed upon opinion, just a certain number of loud individuals trying to silence others, and everyone else who just quietly don't care. > You've been proven wrong right now. I was saying that it's impossible to prove that something isn't offensive. Please take your time to actually understand posts you read before posting angry comments.
- goodpoint 4y ago
  > Except there isn't an agreed upon opinion, just a certain number of loud individuals trying to silence others Again you are trying to make a strawman, claiming that it's just some minority and you are so brave for standing up to them. It isn't. Open a dictionary and you'll find a number of words clearly defined as offensive. Language isn't just an opinion of few people. > I was saying that it's impossible to prove that something isn't offensive. Please take your time to actually understand posts you read before posting angry comments. Spare us the BS.
  - bheadmaster 4y ago
    > Again you are trying to make a strawman, claiming that it's just some minority Are you implying that it's not? If so, do you have any reasoning to support that claim? > Language isn't just an opinion of few people Language is defined by how people use it. There is no central authority for the meaning, or level of offensiveness, of words. > Spare us the BS. Who's "us"? And what bullshit are you talking about exactly? Your demeaning attitude is not appreciated.

yamtaddle 4y ago

Someone on here recently asserted that ditching the colloquial use of "crazy" had significant mainstream support. I pushed back on people even noticing that it might be a problem, let alone actively choosing not to use it, being anything like a norm outside tiny niches of terminally-online Web users. Sure enough, sensitized to it, I heard an NPR host and a Chipotle ad use it in the colloquial sense within the next week. And those are just the ones I noticed, and that were very-public rather than in private conversations. This stuff's not mainstream and normal people don't care a bit. It's not even caught on in groups worried about impressing the word-police crowd (major advertisers and NPR both qualifying, I should think).