Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How people talk about marijuana on Reddit: a natural language analysis

medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 45 posts

Re: How people talk about marijuana on Reddit: a natural language analysis

#21

Post by metaphorm »

inuhj wrote: post #17

'Marijuana' is considered a racist term in the industry. The preferred word is 'cannabis'.

upvoted for truth. maybe people downvoting aren't familiar with the history.

so here's some history. the name "marijuana" was pushed by Harry Anslinger[0] as a way to trigger racial anxiety amongst conservative whites who held negative views with respect towards Mexicans. the other names for the plant being "hemp" (a non-psychoactive strain used as an industrial fiber crop) and "cannabis" (latin name for the genus of the plant).

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger

Re: How people talk about marijuana on Reddit: a natural language analysis

#22

Post by jat850 »

metaphorm wrote: post #21
inuhj wrote: post #17

'Marijuana' is considered a racist term in the industry. The preferred word is 'cannabis'.

upvoted for truth. maybe people downvoting aren't familiar with the history. so here's some history. the name "marijuana" was pushed by Harry Anslinger[0] as a way to trigger racial anxiety amongst conservative whites who held negative views with respect towards Mexicans. the other names for the plant being "hemp" (a non-psychoactive strain used as an industrial fiber crop) and "cannabis" (latin name for the genus of…

I didn't downvote, but some research shows that this is a controversial truth, even among those in the industry. The history is not controversial but the treatment of marijuana as a racist term is, from what I can see.

Re: How people talk about marijuana on Reddit: a natural language analysis

#23

Post by jpttsn »

Muuuchem wrote: post #9

Funny how marijuana was most mentioned with Donald Trump. I know the /r/trees subreddit thought Trump would be good for recreational Marijuana but doesn't look like that is true. The Trump subreddit (The_Donald) was also extremely pro marijauna and often boasted that Trump was better for legal marijuana than Clinton. Then enter Jefferey Bouraguard Sessions III.

Trump's media prominence means Trump is mentioned a lot in any topic.

Re: How people talk about marijuana on Reddit: a natural language analysis

#24

Post by jpttsn »

metaphorm wrote: post #21
inuhj wrote: post #17

'Marijuana' is considered a racist term in the industry. The preferred word is 'cannabis'.

upvoted for truth. maybe people downvoting aren't familiar with the history. so here's some history. the name "marijuana" was pushed by Harry Anslinger[0] as a way to trigger racial anxiety amongst conservative whites who held negative views with respect towards Mexicans. the other names for the plant being "hemp" (a non-psychoactive strain used as an industrial fiber crop) and "cannabis" (latin name for the genus of…

Do you have a source for the about downvoters' opinions?

Re: How people talk about marijuana on Reddit: a natural language analysis

#25

Post by jerf »

jpttsn wrote: post #23
Muuuchem wrote: post #9

Funny how marijuana was most mentioned with Donald Trump. I know the /r/trees subreddit thought Trump would be good for recreational Marijuana but doesn't look like that is true. The Trump subreddit (The_Donald) was also extremely pro marijauna and often boasted that Trump was better for legal marijuana than Clinton. Then enter Jefferey Bouraguard Sessions III.

Trump's media prominence means Trump is mentioned a lot in any topic.

And I'd note this is not a political point; it's a base-rate comment [1]. Political comments will tend to have other political topics arise in them, and it would require more detailed analysis to know if there is any true signal here. (Not necessarily a lot more detailed... just more than an eyeball glance.)

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Base_rate

Re: How people talk about marijuana on Reddit: a natural language analysis

#26

Post by OldSchoolJohnny »

treehau5 wrote: post #20
Raphmedia wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who would agree to legalize the "devil's tobacco"? It's clearly and evil plant! Think of the "reefer madness"!

It's the devil's lettuce, not tobacco. :D

Satans salad?

Re: How people talk about marijuana on Reddit: a natural language analysis

#27

Post by Yen »

nonsince wrote: post #6

Decent intro to natural language processing, but scientifically rubbish. I think using "cannabis" and "marajuana" skews heavily towards advocacy and serious discussion, since general chat about weed will use words such as, well, weed. Or pot, or hash, or herbs, or the maple leaf emoji, or a link to /r/trees. The problem with natural language processing on drugs is that the names people use for drugs are specifically…

Even more egregious than that:

> For quality control, I looked only at comments with Reddit score > 100

That's a non-trivial popularity score. Also, since it's an absolute score, it will bias against smaller subreddits, where 100 points on any comment is a difficult task.

This is much less "how people talk on reddit", and much more "the type of comment that gets upvotes on the default subreddits"

Re: How people talk about marijuana on Reddit: a natural language analysis

#28

Post by hl5 »

at-fates-hands wrote: post #12
nonsince wrote: post #6

Decent intro to natural language processing, but scientifically rubbish. I think using "cannabis" and "marajuana" skews heavily towards advocacy and serious discussion, since general chat about weed will use words such as, well, weed. Or pot, or hash, or herbs, or the maple leaf emoji, or a link to /r/trees. The problem with natural language processing on drugs is that the names people use for drugs are specifically…

Having studied culture for more than a decade, this makes me feel some validation that even in 2017, computers have yet to unravel the intricacies of culture.

In a very limited sense they have since the ads you end up seeing are targeted towards your culture based on your browsing history.

Re: How people talk about marijuana on Reddit: a natural language analysis

#29

Post by OscarCunningham »

cavanasm wrote: post #10
Muuuchem wrote: post #9

Funny how marijuana was most mentioned with Donald Trump. I know the /r/trees subreddit thought Trump would be good for recreational Marijuana but doesn't look like that is true. The Trump subreddit (The_Donald) was also extremely pro marijauna and often boasted that Trump was better for legal marijuana than Clinton. Then enter Jefferey Bouraguard Sessions III.

I don't really understand why people would think Trump would be supportive of any kind of intoxicant. His older brother was an alcoholic and died before their dad (which depending on the source you're reading, had a big impact on him).

Many of the biggest benefits of marijuana legalisation come from the fact that it tends to displace alcohol.
Post reply on HN