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PaperclipPerfector  5d ago (text post)   19935 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026

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Digger is currently on pace to be one of the biggest financial bombs of all time, at least Top 5, maybe Top 3

It’s pretty hard to get IRL hype going when nobody wants to say the name of the film in public.

walks up to watercooler “Hey, did you guys see DIGGER? Yeah, DIGGER, the movie. It’s called DIGGER. Tom Cruise is DIGGER.”

It's pronounced (/diːˈʒer/).

“I did, Bob! Tom Cruise played such a great DIGGER in the movie. Usually I’d never watch a movie where the main character is just some DIGGER, but Cruise’s character was so well-spoken and engaging for a DIGGER. Unlike most DIGGERS, he actually showed some semblance of intelligence and self-awareness.”

...does that sound too close to a bad word for Americans?

Are you nervous about saying any word that has an -igger sound in it?

Over here, 'digger' is a common, complimentary way to refer to an Australian soldier. It's normal to hear people talking about 'supporting the diggers', for instance. It's funny to think that going on about 'the diggers' would make any Americans present uncomfortable.

...does that sound too close to a bad word for Americans?

Simping for and being afraid of offending blacks is basically America’s pasttime. In addition to the usual trigger words like niggling, sniggering, and niggardly that were mentioned elsewhere in this thread, neige (Mandarin for “that”) and dinger have also attracted controversy.

Just as linguists try to figure out what the proto-Indo-European word for "bear" was, I like to imagine researchers in several thousand years trying to figure out what root word caused words ending in -igger sounds and then even -inger sounds to disappear from spoken English.

As someone whose workplace is heavily Chinese and hears Mandarin-language conversations every day, the nei ge dispute made me laugh.

If you can't handle hearing nei ge, I hope you are never in earshot of two Chinese people talking, because you will hear it a lot.

My brother attended college with a woke Millennial from the states, who felt uncomfortable saying the N-word.

To clarify, I don't mean he felt uncomfortable saying "nigger", which is hardly unusual. I mean he felt uncomfortable saying the phrase "the N-word".

mean he felt uncomfortable saying the phrase "the N-word".

I love this. I wonder what the next step is. "The N-W phrase"?

"TNW". You know that famous song by Jay-Z and Kanye West, "T-N-Dubyas in Paris".

That would be all too quickly appropriated by Chuds as “Total Nigger Weath.”

TNW is too close to TND. Not a realistic option.

I would, too. It’s always sounded like a stupid euphemism to me.

I understand thinking the euphemism is stupid. I was baffled by the way this guy (in my brother's telling) actually lowered his voice to say "the N-word", as if that phrase in itself constituted a hateful racial slur.

With apologies to Stevie Wonder:

>But what it is, though old, so new
>To fill your heart like no three words could ever do

>I just called to say 'the N-word'
>I just called to say how much I care
>I just called to say 'the N-word'
>And I mean it from the bottom of my heart

Remember when people used to do that for "the F-word"? I guess nothing really ever changes, does it.

Okay, you made me laugh out loud, gg

I snigger at people whose rigour about words that rhyme with digger is pursued with such vigour that even a euphemism is a trigger.

It's funny to think that going on about 'the diggers' would make any Americans present uncomfortable.

It absolutely would make the average PMC American uncomfortable (hydro can weigh in on whether the average blue collar worker would give a shit, my guess is no). Just mentioning (not using) the words niggling, niggardly, or sniggering will cause bullets of sweat to pop on listeners' foreheads, but it's spread beyond that to all -igger words, too.

Yeah no, nobody cares. Maybe if it's mispronounced.

I heard such stories about 'The American Society of Magical Negroes' which also bombed.

That movie failed because of ridiculous wokeness in place of plot.

Oh certainly. But it's funny imagining the woke people who might even want tickets for that film trying to avoid saying the no no word at the end!

They literally had a blueprint.

It depends on the context. I would not want to use any -igger word in a situation where it could refer to a person. "Digger" is what you call a piece of construction equipment

You mean an excavator?

Body positivity is paramount; I, for one, would definitely never call someone a 'bigger'.

Those are usually called "hoes", despite that also being a tad fraught...

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