Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
So maybe I can try to give an idea of a more specific real-world example.
Say there’s a Discord group, where everyone plays COD, but also some members are very practiced in making fake SWAT calls, and innocent people have nearly been killed by them.
That is a big, urgent issue; one that can drive emotions. Picture that an influencer gives a statement like “These gamers are horrible, worthless people.”
You’re right, that an absolutely perfect, flawless statement might have been “The people SWATting in that Discord are horrible and worthless.” But assume the statement, in its emotion, tried to be contextual and descriptive, mentioning “gamers”.
In your definition, this might be an unnecessary detail. Yet, that’s not a huge misstep; and yet someone could potentially weaponize that statement so it sounds like the influencer believes all members of that Discord, or even all gamers, are horrible. AND, by pulling attention to that statement, they both draw attention off that Discord, and discourage people from speaking out on it.
Worse, let’s say the next influencer gives a perfect statement: “We will bring SWATters to justice”. If people have already fallen under the misconception that this is a cultural war targeting gamers, then they might invent reasons to oppose that second statement anyway, since they feel their identity is being attacked. So it can even discourage people from speaking up in the “wrong” way.
Hence why I’d like to work on terminology for the misdirection, rather than tone policing on the exact words people use; something that can help us call it out. Unnecessary details like “black”, “female” or non-identity descriptors like “blue-collar” can be a misstep, but they are not the largest evil in a lot of cases.
Thank you. I grew up with a lot of unnecessary details described around me, so I was having difficulty defing a more innocent example.
I stick by my examples. You can find more information on them in the Wikipedia link in the other reply.