Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
What are your picks for words/idioms that ought to be retired this year?
My pick is LARP, which used to mean something, but now just means "people I don't like are doing something." When both 4chan and the Azov are "Nazi LARPers;" the phrase just has no meaning, they seem to lack the live action on the one hand and the role playing on the other. I think it also overprivileges nostalgia for an imagined past when people were "real" and ideologies were "serious;" read about them and real successful revolutions and wars were just as filled with dilettantes, misfits, personal drama, and nonsense on their way to changing the world. Failure to recognize this starves our knowledge of history.
LARP has a more specific meaning, even in the insult version. A certain Don Quixote-like quality of delusional ly pretending to be something anachronistic, from a different time. Also not fully standing behind the thing with proper skin in the game. Playing a tough guy without backing it up. Now whether this applies to the Azov people, I don't know but accusing them of being unreal, weak, all talk, etc. is a classic insult. It doesn't make those words meaningless.
OP is probably complaining about my usage of LARP in a recent thread, which, fair enough, maybe it is not specified enough. But I meant it more like "bored people who have been so well-insulated from the real-world that they go out and do dangerous stuff."
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