psycotica0

I think you're looking for the word "cue" my friend!

A Single Extraordinary Gentleman

The Dirty Individual

Scott Pilgrim vs Himself

~(which actually is kinda accurate)~

The Only Element

I think we agree more than we disagree, but are at different points on the spectrum. For example:

Again, I don't understand why a "line needs to be drawn" based on some imaginary attack on the English language. What's the threat here? That someone submits a change while saying the word "aardvark" is offensive? Just reject that pr and move on.

This isn't meant as a "gotcha", but in this paragraph about not drawing a line, you drew a line. You decided aardvark was obviously too far, and that that PR should be rejected. How you feel about aardvark is how most of us already feel about the word "stupid".

But more broadly:

Maybe if just a few people are hurt by something, and the choice is between doing nothing (and them being hurt) and saying "no worries, send the change" and not hurting a few people, we can just... Not hurt them? Seems straightforward.

I think most people (in this community, on this thread) are not pro hurting people. What I feel is more like: if you are hurt by the word "stupid", or self-identify as stupid, you should not. No one is using it as a slur against your people. There are slurs! They exist, it's just that this isn't one of them, in the way people mean it. And so I feel like, in this case, at this point in the spectrum, these people should heal themselves rather than change software / the culture / the world to suit their insecurities.

If course it's a squishy grey area, but if I found the word aardvark offensive because some kids called me aardvark at school growing up or something and bullied me, that's tragic, and it's very real for hypothetical me, but that's something I should work through in therapy, rather than something I should make the concern of everyone around me. In my opinion. And I feel like being triggered by the word "stupid" is in the same category, also in my opinion.

If anything, and I'm stepping in bees again, it feels kind of egocentric to see someone write "replies are stupid" in their own code, in response to presumably their opinion about a standard or spec or something, and to see they've written that and think "this is about me".

As an unfortunately pedantic person, it really bothers me that blacklist and whitelist get caught up in all this. Like, yeah, I can see why people think it's related to skin colour, and I can see the argument that even if it wasn't originally about skin colour, it leaves an impression of "white good, black bad" regardless of its original intentions. But fuck do I wish we didn't call white people white and black people black. It's not accurate, and would solve a whole bunch of these "colour-related phrases becoming racial" problems. We should just stop using colours to refer to people! But that ship has long sailed, and its harder to advocate in that direction, so I guess I'm fine with it. But I can dream 😛

Also "master" has other uses, like a Master Sculpter making a masterpiece, and more relatedly things like the "master tape" being the tape other tapes are copied from, a la "remastered". But I concede it's pretty hard to make that argument when DBs and BIOSes have "masters" versus "slaves" 😬😅

That said - is it really important to defend "stupid" as a word choice? Does rewording it, maybe to "senseless" or "ignorant", create some huge negative impact for a user? It seems like kind of a minimal effort solution that can accommodate users, so why make it a big deal?

I know I'm wandering through a nest of bees here, but this cuts both ways, I think. No, this particular word isn't important, and changing it is fine. Any one word can be fine. But similarly why did this user show up asking it to be changed? Is it a huge negative impact to leave it for the majority of users either? It feels like someone pulled a dictionary of newly bad words off a blog and grepped through the source with the perceived mission of contributing to the healing of the world, as a most charitable assumption on their intentions.

I think no one is worried about any one word, or any one PR. The concern is that the goalposts seem to change from words that 95% of people agree are bad, to words 60% of people agree are bad, to words like this that maybe 1% of people feel are bad, and there's a grey area here on what level of badness is bad enough for all of us to change to accomodate one or two people's sensitivities, and to what level those people should be responsible for their own sensitivities.

This is a civilization and cultural level spectrum which has "change for your society" and "society bends to you without change" at its ends, and different people fall at different points on this spectrum, which will put that at different points on the "how bad does a word need to be for me to be a bad person for typing it in my own code" spectrum. And for me, I feel "stupid" is over my line and is a noisy change that might beget other more petty changes with no benefit to the vast majority, despite how simple it is. But you clearly feel more strongly, and I can tolerate that too.

All that having been said, I have no opinion or context about this particular user being banned from this particular chat, unrelated to the ethics of the PR.

Yeah, this one feels like an overreach to me. Calling a person stupid is bad, fair, but that's because the word is negative, and calling a person a negative word isn't nice.

But in this case, "replies_are_stupid" has nothing to do with a person. They're inanimate. So calling replies stupid is labelling replies negatively, but that's fine because they're inanimate. I'm not sure "loweffort" is better or even applicable. I guarantee someone will have a problem with "loweffort" in the future. Maybe "ill-advised" would be better in this context?

And before I get strawmanned by someone saying "would it be the same if they called it replies_are_gay" or something, I think that is different, because that's implying gay is bad, which is the actual problem with that usage. It's inaccurate to the problem, and only makes sense if gay people catch strays.

If you read "replies_are_stupid" and felt attacked, you need a better therapist, because "stupid" isn't an identity you should feel for yourself or those you love.

This isn't shit, you're shit!

~Muhfuckin shitpost my ass...~

I know it's kinda off topic, but what I find even weirder are bands that are "one hit wonders" in one country, but have like 10 hits and a long career in another country.

They'll have a whole wikipedia article of awards they've won you've never heard of, and tours they went on, and you're like "they wrote more than one song!?"

Maybe we're LONG LOST TWINS!!! 🙀