You’re referring to some usage of the word “problematic” and you’re making an assumption that we have enough shared context that I can understand what you’re ta

You’re referring to some usage of the word “problematic” and you’re making an assumption that we have enough shared context that I can understand what you’re talking about—but honestly, no, no, I do not understand what you’re talking about. I think you are just complaining about some specific usage of the word, and there are a lot of words which happen to be used poorly—like “dopamine” which people use to talk about the feeling of scrolling through social media. This isn’t a complaint about the word “dopamine” but a complaint against its misuse! > And the issue is that it's kind of a cowardly word. I think, at the core, complaints against the word “problematic” can be boiled down to emotional sentiments like this. > Thus, they often should say more precisely what they are implying; often e.g. this person is racist, or a pedophile, or homophobic, etc. Usage of the word “problematic” to describe people is somewhat minor, I think. I definitely didn’t think of this usage. I see the word “problematic” used to describe practices, processes, ideas, situations, etc. Sometimes, a problem is complicated and multifaceted. You can’t boil it down to a single thing like “pedophilia”. The word “problematic” is there to say “there are problems with this, but those problems are many and don’t boil down to some simple, other word.” We need both broad and specific words. The correct, specific word does not always exist.