3 ms·

Using a pejorative is not an "ad hominem".

• sailfast 2y ago
  Good point. Replacing with pejorative would likely have been better wording potentially to get my point across but simply having held a role in the past as a person does not automatically associate you with all the sins of anyone ever in that role, so I see it as a personal attack unrelated to the point of the article.
• barfbagginus 2y ago
  Yeah, the pejoratives were not the argument. They were clearly put there to make the reading /freaking hilarious/ for anyone on board with "Google Bad". But I wonder if there was a deeper strategy: were the attacks put there so that Google gatekeepers would ignore the article's insights? It could have a similar effect to Cory Doctor's concept of enshittification. I don't know if it's intentional, but the vulgarity of the term seems to prevent committed enshittifiers from reflecting critically about enshittification and how to stop in time to avoid a collapse. After feeling the insult, enshittware supporters seem to conclude enshittification is a non-existent category. It would be fun to learn these are intentional choices, designed to sabotage the criticized party on an epistemological level!