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I mean, is it so terrible to say these people's names? You can obviously disagree with the way in which the events have been framed and understood, but at some point you're just giving ammunition to your opposition who can make the reasonable claim that you're trying to dehumanize Floyd or Trayvon by not treating them as people worthy of being referenced, even when relevant, and even to criticize them.
Was thinking of making a higher level post but I'll just reply here:
Imagine if the enemy said "doing the hokey pokey is an endorsement of our cause." Or alternatively "doing the hokey pokey is pledging loyalty our cause." Well I would find it a pretty compelling reason to stop doing the hokey pokey. Even though I might like that dance, and have to sit out for that at the school dance. Refusing to do it is enough of a low cost to me that I'm willing to cede the ground and let them make the hokey pokey an enemy loyalty pledge.
You might say that I should do the hokey pokey anyways to try to reclaim it from the enemy. That might be reasonable depending on the specific factors at the time, but when the overwhelming number of people doing it are loyal enemy servants, that's difficult. All the genuine hokey pokey lovers in the world aren't enough to outnumber the enemy's loyalists, and unfortunately they're all going to be misjudged as being part of the enemy's group just for doing what they love. They'll probably have to post a sign outside their gym that says "we don't endorse the enemy." But unfortunately holding that ground is not a battle that can be easily won.
Well, sure, but who on earth says that saying the name 'George Floyd' or that saying the phrase 'Black Lives Matter' (in reference to a movement and organisation called Black Lives Matter) constitutes endorsing anything? I don't see the concern here.
I can understand not wanting to use certain phrases because they frame an issue in a way you disagree with. For instance, I avoid saying the phrase 'marriage equality' because I think it is a gross mischaracterisation of the issue, and if I used it I think I would be accepting a strawman. Likewise there's a tic among some activists where they refuse to use the phrase 'pro-life' in any circumstances; they instead refer to pro-life activists as 'anti-abortion activists'.
But 'George Floyd' is just a name, and saying it implies nothing about whether one supports or opposes any political issue related to him. Likewise BLM is the name of an organisation. I don't think that saying it in that context constitutes a kind of endorsement.
By saying the name of the organization, you have also said the words in that phrase. By saying those words, you have necessarily incepted the idea represented by that phrase into the mind of yourself and the minds of your readers. Even though the idea may be completely irrelevant to your intended discussion denouncing or even defending the organization, you have necessarily made the idea represented by the phrase a topic of contemplation and discussion, even against your best intention.
You have also contributed to the dissemination of that idea as readers who have not heard that phrase before will be exposed to it now. Especially without an explicit denial of the idea, introducing a new idea to someone carries a small implicit endorsement. This might not be particularly an issue with the phrase that has the same words as the name of that organization, but in general I believe this rule applies.
Have you heard of the use-mention distinction?
One of the reasons we left Reddit was that a user was explaining the (((brackets))) around certain names, and what it meant, and Reddit decided that using them, even in an explanation like this one here, indicates an endorsement of the position.
Now sure, if your ideological opponents pick a name that is obviously biased, you don’t have to use that - no one is saying you should call it “The Public Execution of the Innocent George Floyd by white supremecist cops, as endorsed by Republikkkans”. But calling it “George Floyd’s death” is, if anything, conservative coded.
Censoring his name, or censoring the name of the activist organization BLM, simply makes the arguments appear unserious - to me, they seem like someone who is so angry about the concept that they can’t think clearly about it, and as a result, are probably incorrect about it.
Yes, I understand the distinction, but the issue is that I may want to mention that activist organization without mentioning the idea that is conveyed by the words in the name of that organization. That idea may be unrelated entirely to the relevant actions of that organization, yet by writing the words in the name of the organization, you have brought that unrelated idea into the discussion, whether you or the other readers want to or not.
Of course, this doesn't directly address the issue of saying the name of a certain individual who was linked to the 2020 riots. That argument is somewhat more complex.
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Yep, that's the distinction I was going to make as well.
Organisations and movements have names, and those names are often intended to communicate something flattering about the organisation. Nonetheless using those names is not usually taken as endorsement. I call the Human Rights Campaign the Human Rights Campaign without necessarily agreeing that they do in fact campaign for human rights. I call the Justice Democrats or the Freedom Caucus by their names without thereby conceding that they have anything to do with justice or with freedom.
I understand wanting to be careful about the language you use. There are cases where I would be careful. But this seems excessive to me.
The names "Human Rights Campaign, "Justice Democrats" or "Freedom Caucus" don't convey any message at all, beyond possibly giving an inaccurate idea of what the organization does. You can't say "human rights campaign is false." It doesn't say anything in particular about human rights or campaigning.
On the other hand, the words in the name of the organization do have a direct plain meaning. A meaning that is direct and can be argued. It's certainly possible to argue that "[words in the name of the organization] is false" or "[words in the name of the organization] is true."
Wanderer got there first, I think.
Lower-case 'black lives matter' is a mother statement. Nobody's going to argue that the lives of black people don't matter except the most egregious and nihilistic of racists. The phrase 'black lives matter' is even entirely consistent with believing that black lives are worth less than white lives - if they matter any amount above zero, the statement is true.
Capital-letter 'Black Lives Matter' refers to a movement that makes specific, potentially false claims around police violence, structural racism, and so on. I fully sympathise with not wanting to endorse those claims, since many of them are false. But I don't see how naming the movement constitutes endorsing it, no more than saying the words 'Human Rights Campaign' implies that I agree with the specific, potentially false claims made by the HRC.
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Firstly, unless you're a complete nihilist, "black lives matter" is a true statement. So's "blue lives matter", and so's "all lives matter". The controversial ideological position behind BLM's name is the claim that white cops don't believe black lives matter and are consequently shooting innocent blacks left and right. Conservatives believe that this is baseless slander, that most cops value human lives as much as anyone without racial discrimination, and that the supposed spree of extrajudicial police killings is an illusion at best, a deliberate lie at worst. Nobody except a few mad edgelords disputes the literal meaning of the words "black lives matter". The implicit BLM claim of "black lives matter, and yet white cops are racist and don't believe that", meanwhile, is so contextual that simply saying the name "Black Lives Matter" does not, in any conceivable way, constitute parroting that claim out loud.
More salient, however, is the fact that while "black lives matter" is technically a "message" with a "direct plain meaning", the same can hardly be said of the words "george floyd". You are not endorsing any particular idea by mouthing or writing those syllables, except that there was a human being by that name involved in the event at issue, a truth-claim which I… hope you would not deny as a matter of objective fact.
That second bit is making it especially hard to take you seriously.
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More words to justify treating simple and clear descriptive names as if you are a Harry Potter character afraid of summoning He Who Is Not To Be Named. This is not any kind of rational or principled opposition to a nebulous "enemy." It's literal superstition.
There are any number of people and organizations we all hold in disdain or worse. Inventing euphemisms or derogatory epithets to avoid naming them is the level of response I expect from young teens.
I am not afraid of saying anything. I am avoiding disseminating the concept because it's harmful.
This is not about that organization. It is about the idea spread by the words that are used in that organization's name. And about people forced or compelled to say those words and thus contemplate that idea.Even if that organization did something really admirable and I wanted to praise the organization, it would still be justified to avoid saying those words.
That people should care about the lives of black people?
yes.tar.gz
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Not only have you disseminated the concept but your additional tortured censoring likely results in the mind of the average reader lingering on the concept longer than the plaintext, rather than glossing over the meaning of the words. Quit fooling yourself, no one here has been saved from learning what "black lives matter" says due to your blurring.
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I'm ok with that -- obviously that's what they are!
There's even the movement to stop saying pro-choice (among pro-choicers) and instead say pro-abortion. I'm fine with this. Obviously whether abortion is acceptable and should be legal, and under what circumstances, is the core of the debate. I'm happy to use the euphemisms, because it's also true that pro-lifers believe they're defending life and pro-choicers believe they're defending the ability to choose whether to carry a child to term.
I get the "marriage equality" thing, but honestly I'm fine with that term too -- if you believe gay marriage is meaningfully different from straight marriage, obviously you think it's unequal, and should be so legally, in an important way! Of course, that's strategically dangerous, but I would rather people just bite the bullet of whatever it is they want to argue for and own it. But I'm also happy with the term "traditional marriage," though I'd prefer if advocates for that opposed "we just don't love each other anymore" divorces as well.
I guess I just take the "avoid semantic debates" thing pretty far -- for the most part, I'll use any term you want me to use, I'd prefer to think about the object level.
I did a fun excercise once, where I tried to exploit the euphemism treadmill for humor or for trolling (not that I commend trolling). I just found the most out-there, unknown, transgressive, new-style, politically-correct term for something, then used it to say something deeply offensive about that thing:
"People of color should go back to where they came from."
"Birthing people should be forced to have at least one child a year." (This phrase is just dumb, I see why radfems hated it so much.)
"BIPOC are a major threat to the social fabric of the United States."
"The LGBTQIA2S+ community is made up entirely of groomers."
"Trans women of color are the worst people on the planet."
(For the record, I don't believe any of this. These are merely examples.)
Doesn't have the same valence as using a slur, does it? And yet these phrases communicate a pretty harsh claim. But stripped of opposing-tribe markers, the actual object-level claim emerges like Neo from the uterine vat of the Matrix, and can be discussed.
So I guess that's why I cringe at euphemistic avoidance of opposing-tribe terms: I'd rather make a harsh claim in a way that might get mistaken for an opposing-tribe claim than signal my in-group in a way that burdens my claim with its smell. It's not about claiming territory for me, it's about exploring ideas.
Well, one sticking point is that it used to be a major conservative talking point on the topic of gay marriage that the word "marriage" means "a man and a woman getting hitched", exclusively, fundamentally; that so-called "gay marriage" is not marriage at all, and granting queers the use of that word even with a qualifier is already surrendering half the battle. Precisely analogous to the anti-trans contingent's reluctance to use a term like "trans woman".
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Among pro-choicers themselves? I remember in the past once, wanting to avoid biased labels, talking about 'anti-abortion and pro-abortion activists', and the latter angrily telling me that this was incredibly biased of me, and they're not 'pro-abortion', nobody is in favour of abortions as such, but rather they are in favour of a woman's right to choose. I thought that remained the general position, and that outside of a few relatively radical voices, very few people actually try to present themselves as liking abortion as such.
In practice today I mostly just use 'pro-life' and 'pro-choice', and when people quibble those labels ("They're not pro-life! They're just pro-birth! Look, they oppose the welfare state and support capital punishment!" and similar), I tend to assume the quibblers are just trying to pick fights and are not worth engaging with in good faith.
Yeah, I recall it was an explicit point among some pro-choicers to “own” the abortion activism in the aftermath of Dobbs. Maybe the larger ecosystem has rejected that take. But it was a thing at the time, and I respected the candor and straightforwardness of the view. I get that the point is “women should have the right to choose” and that it’s not “abortion is the greatest thing ever!” but the shift has been from “safe, legal, and rare” to “safe, legal, and none of your damn business how rare it is.” It’s more of a change in tone than a change in view point.
At least here’s one activist group that thinks this way.
...wow, that's a new one to me. In my experience prior to now, very few activists would say that abortions are actively good. The line I usually heard was indeed that abortions, while unpleasant or even tragic, are sometimes necessary, and that the best person to decide whether or not one is necessary is the woman considering one. That seemed like a more sensible approach if only because there are a great many people who have moral qualms or concerns around abortion who can be persuaded into accepting it sometimes as a lesser evil, and those are the people that pro-choice and pro-life movements fight to sway to their side.
But I'm probably behind the times here. I haven't been following this area closely over the last few years.
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The solution is to do a modified hokey pokey. You're signaling to your ingroup your resistance while refusing to let the outgroup dictate your actions. One perhaps silly example is that I will still draw a rainbow, despite opposing gender ideology, but will draw it in the classical style using just red, yellow, and blue.
I think this puts me on the side of using 'Fentanyl Floyd' at least directionally. I think I just disagree with that phrase in particular. It seems uncouth and disrespectful. You don't modify the hokey pokey by twerking in the middle of it because you make an even bigger fool of yourself.
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Nah, man, this is silly. His name was George Floyd. That's simply a fact. He was a person of historical significance who had a name that we use the same way we use names to refer to anyone else when we're trying to convey information about who we're discussing. You are not "Saying his name" in the liturgical BLM sense just because you use his name to communicate data.
You can despise him and the Black Lives Matter movement all you want, but literally Voldemorting words is giving "the enemy" more power over you than if you just used accurate names and descriptions for things. Notice that I typed "Black Lives Matter" without in any way implying that I endorse the movement, because everyone understands what I mean by referring to it.
These awkward affectations you use to avoid typing words remind me of Zoomers saying "unalived" or "grape" - originally because they had to censor certain words on TikTok, but now it's just becoming a Zoomer thing that you can't Say Those Words.
It's ridiculous and it isn't making some political point or p0wning the Wokes, it's just you contributing to the obfuscation of language.
This post reminds me of the "His name was Robert Paulson" scene from Fight Club. Just a heads up.
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Thought about this more and wrote a more direct response in a separate comment: https://www.themotte.org/post/2254/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/348256?context=8#context
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I've never heard of "grape", but I don't spend much time on the Tok. "Unalived" is just an inherently funny word, it sounds like a Monty Python joke about bureaucratic language. I'd only use it as part of a joke.
Of course, "died" is a phrase people don't like saying, "passed away" is the old euphemism.
I don't know anyone who won't say "died" in person, but maybe this is a younger zoomer thing that I'm too unbrainrotted to understand.
Debatable.
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I don't follow Tiktok at all, but it's spread to YouTube and reddit and other social media. "Unalived" is usually used as a euphemism for killed or committed suicide. "Grape" also sounds like it's supposed to be a joke to me, but it seems to be replacing the "r*pe" obfuscation that I guess is supposed to be less "triggering" than seeing all the letters.
I don’t think it’s sensitivity reasons, it was that the algorithms on social media platforms deranked or demonetized content that had references to death or sexual assault. Presumably for advertisement reasons. You said it’s grown beyond just that, but I believe YouTube and other platforms censor it just like TikTok, so they’re just doing what the algorithms encourage.
So this isn’t an example of zoomer fragility — it’s an example of the power of advertiser skittishness and algorithmic content ranking to affect language on multiple platforms. (That sounded like AI, but it wasn’t. Promise.)
I could also just be out of touch on this, but I’ve never heard of someone who literally won’t say the word “killed” in an in-person setting. Rape is more sensitive, I guess.
Especially with regards to CSA, it definitely leads to a lack of clarity at times. If someone tells me "oh, Alice was abused as a child" it can be pretty tricky to decipher if they're telling me her parents used to beat her, or that she was groomed by a creepy uncle - even when I am actually intended to take the hint by the speaker (as distinct from them deliberately obscuring the facts to protect Alice's privacy).
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I actually dislike when people reflexively avoid "died" as well. I very rarely will say someone "passed away", because I think it's better to be direct about what happened. The person died, it's ok to say it.
I'd argue "passed away" is a more precise term than "died". "Passed away" means died peacefully. If I get a call that tells me my father passed away last night, I instantly parse it as: ah, he died in his sleep, guess age caught up with him at last. If the call instead tells me that my father died last night, I'm as likely to imagine that he had a car accident as anything else.
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I get some sort of autistic pleasure from obfuscating language (my friends and I came up with an insane number of codewords for too many things) so maybe you caught me in some sort of subconscious trap. Irregardless, I will still not say the words.
That doesn't sound very autistic at all, actually.
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Didnt this exact thing happen to the 'Ok' handsign a while ago. It was hilarious.
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At some point, this is just you allowing people you describe as your enemy to literally dictate what you can and can't do, which isn't a position of power, strength, or strategy.
If they get that much on your nerves, it's them who has power over you, not you over them. You're not defeating Newspeak by speaking in the old way -- you're creating a contra-Newspeak that's just as controlling, just as silly, and just as petty as what your opponents are doing. The fact that you're saying this is going on even in your own thoughts actually indicates that the Newspeak is working on you, not that you're resisting it. To put it in conflict terms, like you like, the enemy's in your head, which means you've already lost.
Alternatively, they might just continue to do what they love, and keep
grillingdancing. Because, just perhaps, they won't mind if someone misjudges them as "part of the enemy's group," because they'd rather live life to the fullest than let ingroup/outgroup dynamics shape every aspect of their life.I'm going to say to you what I say to the woke left when they similarly respond with fierce intensity to things the right does: living this way sounds absolutely exhausting, and soul-destroying, not life-giving or powerful.
Honestly I don't think about it 99% of the time because I just grill in irl and the enemy hasn't come for that yet.
If I was a hardcore hokey pokey dancer then sure this would be a major problem but it's really not an issue.
This is in fact true when the enemy controls all of the institutions and positions of power. Where for many people, simply having a job requires many implicit and several explicit oaths of loyalty to the enemy. I am fortunate enough that I am not one of those people.
You also have to remember, the enemy has been doing the hokey pokey and gloating about it, nonstop, 24/7 for 5 years now - on the streets, on tv, at work, in the papers, at the hospital, in the technical documentation for some random API, etc. I'm not the one who made it such a big deal. And NO, I will NOT do it.
Nobody cares which words you say or which wokies use it as a spell to steal all your mana or whatever you're afraid of, just maybe find a way to talk about the subject without everyone on the board cringing their way to a rectal prolapse over your childish personal neurosis.
I don't think I even particularly disagree with you, but this is pure cringe. You sound completely brain-fried and should probably stop consuming culture war material.
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