• socsa@piefed.socialEnglish
    27·
    2 days ago

    Yeah it was kind of obvious it was the attack helicopter meme from the start. The whole thing was a bit silly in the sense that pronouns which don’t reflect human reality aren’t really any kind of moral hazard for ones that do imo.

    At the same time, I kind of feel like gate keeping pronouns actually gives the trolls power in a way. Imagine someone at the office does this and then everyone actually calls them a Christmas tree or whatever. The lack of concern about this new nickname in the broader population would definitely piss them off, since they are the one who cares about that stuff.

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.cat
      13·
      2 days ago

      I think, also, what gives the trolls power is everyone getting upset about it. If it was 50% of the office saying “Is ChristmasTreeSelf coming to the party?” and 50% saying “Bro I’m not saying that it is stupid”, but neither one really treating it as any different than any other Tuesday, then it’s fine. But because people have this deeply held impassion about the whole issue (which exists for a valid reason of course), it means they feel like they need to set these super-rigid rules about what is “allowed” and “not allowed” out of those outcomes, and then other people get upset about having things they are thinking inside their head that they will get banned if they say out loud, and it just becomes a situation of upset-ness instead of anything like positive communication between people. And then there are people who like to be performatively upset because someone violated the rules and now they’re all excited to correct them, which just compounds the problem which was already an upset situation.

      It is okay if people think different from you. I feel like a lot of modern society involves people needing the debate to continue until their own particular viewpoint is “proven right” and becomes the law of the land, so they won’t have to deal with any enemy viewpoints anywhere within the kingdom without someone coming in to correct them, forcibly if necessary, which isn’t really how it works.