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George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

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Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#131
Activist became Social Justice Warrior. (Finally seems to be going away, though.)

Nosy neighbor became A Karen.

Being a trans ally/educator became groomer in some conservative circles.

Liberal became libtard.

In the past weeks, most modifiers used to discuss Israel/Palestine have intensified, not softened. (Wasn't there some Israeli official who used the term "subhuman" on Twitter?)

Mask became chin diaper!

Military/militia wannabes became Meal Team Six / Gravy Seal

Interpersonal conflicts, political debates, and misunderstandings have become accusations of gaslighting-- i.e., two people accusing each other of attempting to brainwash the other

I'd even argue that useful idiot becoming NPC is a change to something more extreme. (The idiot is implied to be unwitting/naive while the NPC is implied to lack agency.)

And finally, stochastic terrorism. There's no precedent for this term AFAICT. And thanks to the vague definition and pretentious borrowing of a term from statistics it is virtually guaranteed to be overused and misunderstood in political discussions, fueling disrespect, anger, outrage, and preventing sober, productive reflection.

There must be thousands of these, fueled mostly by social media.

As for soft language-- since anxiety/depression levels have gone through the roof over the past two decades, there's been a trend of soft language becoming reified and relegated to ASMR videos. As a strong and vocal supported of narrowing the dynamic range of mainstream audio, I whole-heartedly support and endorse this trend.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#132
post #100

I saw a conversation on Twitter a while ago back when it still was Twitter. The OP with many followers was laying out words and classes of words with negative connotations that shouldn't be used. Someone replied in good faith to OP and asked how we should express negative thoughts. OPs answer was basically that we shouldn't. I find that kind of thought very off putting and minorly disturbing. An important part of the…

Something I was rather ignorant to for the longest time was how fascism can exist at both ends of the spectrum. My last day on Mastodon was the day a few people ganged up on me quite aggressively for not putting Alt text in an image. Tolerance isn’t acceptance. It’s letting things you don’t like exist without making a big fuss over it. You can dislike certain speech patterns without having to go on a crusade against…

I recently saw several mentions of image alt text including a poll about alt text on social media. The question was something like "Would you ever post an image without alt text" and something like 99% of responses were "never".

I mean, I've literally never even thought about it so it surprised me that such a high number of respondents would have chosen that. Which I guess is kind of the point. There is an idea that ignorance is bad, but once you have been informed then non-compliance is treated as intentionally malicious. That is, if you know why you ought to add an alt-text and yet you refuse to do so then you are deemed to be complicit in the oppression of those who require alt text to enjoy the Internet.

It is a subtle reframing from "being polite and courteous is good" to "non-compliance is evil".

It also reminds me of a lot of behavior I see in tech spaces. One that comes to mind is the notorious dog-piling on the maintainer of Actix-web framework by well-meaning Rust evangelists who were upset by his use of unsafe language features. Another I recall is when a company had a mix of open source libraries (MIT license) and some other kind of business license in the same repo. They were being harassed for mentioning the product was open source in their marketing.

What is interesting to me is that some people will see some of these examples as justifiable harassment while they will see others as crossing a line. It is just a sad fact that the mechanism to get people to adhere to social norms is often through bullying and shame.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#133
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vegan argument is so silly as if meat industry just spun up overnight and only reason people consume delicious and nutritious animal products is because they can but them in sanitized packaging. I hope you also aren’t buying consumer electronics because then you are literally putting animals ahead of humans. Or is that too inconvenient for you and you actually like the cognitive dissonance after all

I'm puzzled why people are so triggered by the vegan thing. That's not the point. Or maybe it is, maybe the meat eaters culture war is based on the idea of the virtue of eating meat and they get very angry when someone points out that actual animals are being killed, like cut with a knife then let to bleed out then seperated into pieces and shipped to the consumers in a package that doesn't look like an animal that w…

You know, I apologize a bit, because I'm not even sure this answers any of your questions... But you should read Erewhon by Samuel Butler.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erewhon

It was written way back when, but there is even a short section that deals with, ironically, animal rights, that then progresses to plant rights, and does some extrapolating on outcomes when these tendencies are scaled to the extreme, while being set in an environment that, for the time, takes some really scathing shots at the mores of the day which I can't honestly say haven't resurged back into relevance in my lifetime.

I don't generally like just telling people to go read things, (nowadays it can feel like giving someone a "free puppy"). But something tells me it may speak to you, if you're willing to embark on the journey.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#134

Just for fun, from the first example: * Toilet paper -> bathroom tissue --- sure, a softening of the language. * Sneakers -> running shoes --- not a softening; sneakers aren't the same as running shoes, and "sneaker" was a regionalism (it's "gym shoe" where I grew up). * False teeth -> dental appliance --- a softening, though a welcome one in this case. * Medicine -> medication --- a softening (a nominalization of a…

Thanks this is pretty interesting!

Re: “car crash”, crash is the correct “real language”. The use of “accident” implies a lack of responsibility and that car crashes cannot be prevented or reduced. That isn’t true. Many studies show that crashes can be reduced via better engineering, road design, etc.

Calling it an accident definitely seems like softening the language.

https://dmv.vermont.gov/enforcement-and-safety/laws/crashes/...

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#135

Just for fun, from the first example: * Toilet paper -> bathroom tissue --- sure, a softening of the language. * Sneakers -> running shoes --- not a softening; sneakers aren't the same as running shoes, and "sneaker" was a regionalism (it's "gym shoe" where I grew up). * False teeth -> dental appliance --- a softening, though a welcome one in this case. * Medicine -> medication --- a softening (a nominalization of a…

> * Car crash -> automobile accident --- a softening, though he's getting some mileage out of switching "car" to "automobile" (I can hear his voice very clearly in my head dancing over the syllables in "auto-mo-beeel") and the real language is "car accident".

They're very rarely if ever "accidents"

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think more people would be pushing for animal welfare and proper slaughtering/raising conditions if this was done, even if they still ate meat. Why does animal welfare matter if at the end they will end up as food anyway? Not trolling, I legitimately want to understand. From my point of view, livestock is just food, that happens to be in a temporary living state, before being ultimately eaten. As an end consumer,…

Why does human welfare matter if at the end we all eventually die?

It doesn't. Who said so? Your gut feelings? Human intuition?

Nothing temporary ever matters. Human life can only matter if there's something permanent about it. If there isn't, nothing ever matters. None. Nil.

Yes, I'm talking about religion. That pesky thing which folks on HN tend to look down in disgust. The idea of accountability with permanent, eternal consequences. Acts carrying on to another life which won't ever end.

(Not talking about the dumb Christian idea "You are already forgiven no matter what because someone is killed 2 millenia ago!" here.)

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#137
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm puzzled why people are so triggered by the vegan thing. That's not the point. Or maybe it is, maybe the meat eaters culture war is based on the idea of the virtue of eating meat and they get very angry when someone points out that actual animals are being killed, like cut with a knife then let to bleed out then seperated into pieces and shipped to the consumers in a package that doesn't look like an animal that w…

You know, I apologize a bit, because I'm not even sure this answers any of your questions... But you should read Erewhon by Samuel Butler. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erewhon It was written way back when, but there is even a short section that deals with, ironically, animal rights, that then progresses to plant rights, and does some extrapolating on outcomes when these tendencies are scaled to the extreme, while…

Thanks for the book suggestion, sounds like an interesting read.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The emotions one feels watching a video of a factory farm are very, very different from what one feels watching a family raise some livestock and then kill them Is this really true? People who kill animals for a living doesn't have any emotions about it, watching them do it is like watching them cut a tomato.

Almost certainly, we’re talking about videos where batches of animals are kept suffering in tiny cages and the slaughter is done by machines. Watching a bunch of live hatchlings get sucked into some grinder is not the same as watching a Halal killing or some tribal hunting ritual. Those videos turned my stomach, and almost everyone I know who has watched them admits the same. My friends and I all still eat meat, but…

> Watching a bunch of live hatchlings get sucked into some grinder is not the same as watching a Halal killing or some tribal hunting ritual.

You aren't comparing like for like, most people who kill animals doesn't perform a ritual, they just kill it.

Also you can't compare a video trying to show something in a positive light "ritual killing" vs a video trying to show something in a negative light. If they showed you a video about a slaughter that went wrong, the animal is crying as the slaughterer ends it, blood everywhere, then people would feel very bad as well. Or if they showed you a slaughterer joking about as he was slaughtering animals, you probably would feel more as well. Those things are the reality of traditional killing, I don't see how it is any better than a machine doing it. The end result is the same.

The main difference is that we no longer need to train a lot of people to be killing machines like we did before.

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3. shit piss fuck cunt cocksucker motherfucker tits

For anyone wondering, these are the seven words you can’t say on TV (or couldn’t in 1970?) and the actual monologue about them is insightful and eloquent. This is just the punchline without the setup.

I figured in a thread about George Carlin most people would at least get the hint, and also it marked a pretty important point in his career between family friendly comedian and counter-culture icon

Re: George Carlin's "Soft Language" (2019)

#140

Just for fun, from the first example: * Toilet paper -> bathroom tissue --- sure, a softening of the language. * Sneakers -> running shoes --- not a softening; sneakers aren't the same as running shoes, and "sneaker" was a regionalism (it's "gym shoe" where I grew up). * False teeth -> dental appliance --- a softening, though a welcome one in this case. * Medicine -> medication --- a softening (a nominalization of a…

> * Car crash -> automobile accident --- a softening, though he's getting some mileage out of switching "car" to "automobile" (I can hear his voice very clearly in my head dancing over the syllables in "auto-mo-beeel") and the real language is "car accident". They're very rarely if ever "accidents"

Webster's:

1a: an unforeseen and unplanned event or circumstance Their meeting was an accident.

1b: lack of intention or necessity : chance They met by accident rather than by design.

2a: an unfortunate event resulting especially from carelessness or ignorance

Car accidents match one or all of these definitions.

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